Friday, February 22, 2008

Indianapolis 500 Legends


We have to hand it to the developers of Indianapolis 500 Legends: they've got balls. Does Electronic Arts, the largest game publisher in the world, have the nerve to make a Madden football game with only the Dallas Cowboys? Of course not. Does Nintendo, a company whose corporate philosophy is apparently, "Screw you. We'll do what we want." have the stones to craft a new Tetris that uses only one shape of block? No they do not. Yet, the scrappy upstarts in charge of this historically-inspired racing game thought it would be perfectly fine to make a racing game that contained only a single track - and an oval one, at that. Then, they limited the vehicles you could race to those that heated up the asphalt between 1961 and 1971. That, dear friends, is chutzpah. Or, it's a cheaply-made budget game. Hey, look at that price!

Granted, if any one track can handle the load, it's the Indianapolis Raceway. And the developers have tried to make things interesting. Alongside the expected Classic Race mode (1-2 players, 10-200 laps), there's a clever Mission Mode that basically gives you specific tasks in small chunks. Unfortunately, the missions aren't too creative, and typically involve remaining undamaged for a certain time, passing X number of cars within a time limit, or just completing a time trial. This is based in reality, so it's not like you'll be using missiles to burst water balloons or trying to see how many velociraptors you can drag behind you on a chain.

Even worse, many of the missions are quite a bit tougher than they should be because your fellow drivers all seem to be studying to become kamikaze pilots. They'll consistently slam right into you, swoop in front of your car, or even just drift lazily sideways into you, locking their wheels in with yours so neither of you can accelerate properly.

For time trials and races in which you need to avoid damage, this is especially brutal and infuriating because it frequently forces you to completely ignore the proper racing line and just try like hell to avoid everyone else on the track. We know the expression "rubbin' is racin'", but that's a NASCAR saying - these are open wheel cars. Even a single slight touch could catapult the driver to the moon, ass-first. Shouldn't these jalopy jockeys have at least a small sense of self-preservation?


Granted, if any one track can handle the load, it's the Indianapolis Raceway. And the developers have tried to make things interesting. Alongside the expected Classic Race mode (1-2 players, 10-200 laps), there's a clever Mission Mode that basically gives you specific tasks in small chunks. Unfortunately, the missions aren't too creative, and typically involve remaining undamaged for a certain time, passing X number of cars within a time limit, or just completing a time trial. This is based in reality, so it's not like you'll be using missiles to burst water balloons or trying to see how many velociraptors you can drag behind you on a chain.

Even worse, many of the missions are quite a bit tougher than they should be because your fellow drivers all seem to be studying to become kamikaze pilots. They'll consistently slam right into you, swoop in front of your car, or even just drift lazily sideways into you, locking their wheels in with yours so neither of you can accelerate properly.

For time trials and races in which you need to avoid damage, this is especially brutal and infuriating because it frequently forces you to completely ignore the proper racing line and just try like hell to avoid everyone else on the track. We know the expression "rubbin' is racin'", but that's a NASCAR saying - these are open wheel cars. Even a single slight touch could catapult the driver to the moon, ass-first. Shouldn't these jalopy jockeys have at least a small sense of self-preservation?


Posted by wii-play at 1:27 PM
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Classic British Motor Racing


You know you're in trouble when there's a typo on the friggin' box. Not a simple "too" instead of "to" or anything like that, mind you - no, the box for Classic British Motor Racing actually features the line "Wet and Wild Ride". This makes no sense whatsoever, of course - there are 13 cars in the game, but no watercraft - until you realize that the line is actually lifted from one of the publisher Bold's previous games, Kawasaki Jet Ski. Someone forgot to type in a new line when cutting and pasting the old layout for this new game's box.

With that level of attention to detail, what could possibly go wrong with the game itself? Everything.

Where do we start? Okay, how about the fact that it takes a full minute to load up? What is this, 1986? Are we using tape drives again? Then, when it finally arrives, you're treated to graphics and sound pulled straight out of the early PlayStation 2 era. Well, that might be an exaggeration - the sound is more like a PSone game.


Then there's the fact that only two cars (each with a whopping three possible color schemes) are unlocked at the start. Then again, unless names like Healy 3000, TR2, TR3a, TR6, MG Midget and Riley RM mean something to you, the only one of these 13 vehicles you're going to recognize is the Mini Cooper anyhow, so screw it.

After all, it's not as if any of them handle like anything other than a brick-laden sled with its runners wrapped in bacon. The cars accelerate slowly and have a low maximum speed - even antique high-performance cars should be more fleet of foot than this - and the controls (tilt the remote to steer, press buttons for gas, brake, and e-brake) are sloppy and overly sensitive. Thus, once you get up to a respectible speed, steering or hand-brake powersliding are practically non-options.

This crap-tacular arrangement is one of three reasons you'll probably find yourself playing the very first time trial over and over. The second reason is that there are six tracks in the game, but only one of them is unlocked at the game's start. So that's the one you get until you master it.


Posted by wii-play at 1:19 PM
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