Whelp, it’s already here. On November 18th, the Wii U ushered in a new generation of Nintendo hardware, and I’m very excited. Once again, we have a new controller that will deliver different experiences – but as we all know only niche developers and Nintendo will do something about it. Third parties? Haha don’t make me laugh, seriously.
“Sonic and friends are back!” is usually a saying that would make me pull out a gun, but Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed welcomes every franchise Sega can pull out of their arse and organises them into unique vehicles and tracks. Easily mistaken for a kart racer, this game stands on its own and can’t really be compared to anything. If you have to pigeon-hole it, just imagine Mario Kart meets F-Zero at a furry convention and they have a baby with a missing leg. What it really is; an extremely fun arcade racer that uses SEGA’s franchises to create some amazing tracks and a solid experience on Wii U.
Continue reading “Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed – Faster Than U”
YES! A budget racer on Wii, if there’s one genre I know well, it’s this one! I jumped for joy when I saw this game in Kmart, possibly scaring the lady at the counter. There was no sign of Zelda, Xenoblade, or The Last Story on the shelves, but sure enough: 20 copies of Crash Car Racer! It has to be good, right? At $15AU I had to find out.
The name Crash Car Racer does a pretty good job telling you what it is: a racing game with cars that crash. However, it’s not really ABOUT crashing, it’s just a normal racing game that happens to have completely broken physics, conducive to crashes. The disconnected car handling, poorly programmed AI, and bizarre tracks all combine to create a game that pretty much crashes itself every lap, no matter what you do.
Oh yes, this game exists. Reception of the first game was mixed – some people actively hated the game, some passively hated it. Big Beach Sports managed to sell over a million copies; a very impressive milestone for any game. Despite this claim to fame, the game was a broken mess, and was only popular for being the first Wii game to feature Cricket. The motion controls didn’t work and it was a frustrating game to play. THQ decided this was a formula for success, and now it’s back. I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on a copy of Big Beach Sports 2, and I thought I’d give THQ a chance to redeem themselves. After all, they went to the effort of getting a special team to handle this sequel. What could go wrong? With two all new racing mini-games, I couldn’t help but try it.
Motorsport is a big part of Go Vacation, much to my excitement, and it’s found in the form of “Motor Fest” in the City Resort. This one mini-game manages to include not only street races through the resort, but also motorbike racing, checkpoint races, and open-wheel oval racing in a huge stadium. All the motorsport games are controlled with the Wii Wheel setup, using motion to turn – no nunchuck – and much to my relief it feels very smooth, a bit like Mario Kart Wii but faster. The car handling isn’t realistic, but they do wiggle about a bit if you tackle a corner too fast, and you need to lift off the throttle a fair bit, with braking only required on the sharp corners. It’s not exactly Race Pro, but it’s just challenging enough to be satisfying. It’s more comparable to Ridge Racer, which is no surprise when you find out the Ridge Racer development team actually helped work on Go Vacation.
FapMania – Australia-America Wi-Fi Connection
Pro was not prepared for this
More highlights of NOA REGGIE terrorizing TrackMania Wi-Fi some weekends ago. Grubdog, Infernal Monkey, and Pro Daisy were there to stare DEATH IN THE FACE.
We revisit the suspenseful, exciting past quarter of the gaming industry, as witnessed by U.S. President Barack Obama.
Obama and his advisory team closely monitoring the PSN outage. Tension is at an all-time high.
FapMania – Australia-America Wi-Fi Connection
More highlights of NOA REGGIE terrorizing TrackMania Wi-Fi some weekend ago. Grubdog, Infernal Monkey, and Pro Daisy were there to stare DEATH IN THE FACE.
FapMania – Australia-America Wi-Fi Connection
Highlights of NOA REGGIE terrorizing TrackMania Wi-Fi some weekend ago. Grubdog, Infernal Monkey, and Pro Daisy were there to witness his mania. We said, “WOW.”
The video speaks for itself…
What do you get when a team of 8 people make a budget Wii game that simulates racing some of the toughest handling cars in the world from the 60s? Do you believe in miracles?
I get the feeling low-budget (that “b” word! please don’t panic) titles like Speed and FlatOut are genuine curiosities for a small number of people (all 5 of them?). They’re probably cautiously fascinated by a couple other Zoo Games titles or ANYTHING new under $20-25. They’re interested in “experiencing animals”, but only while the beasts are locked up in a cage; that sort of thing. At the same time, the regular gaming press tends to avoid budget games, leaving any [honest] coverage in the hands of YouTube users and Amazon customer reviews – brave, regular people.
Inspired by their courage, I’ve captured a few gameplay videos (60fps) of Speed and FlatOut to provide a more detailed look than what the Flash videos typically allow. Despite being “cheap” games, their core aspects are surprisingly solid, and hopefully some of it shows. Consider it a late follow-up to our Speed/FlatOut write-ups.
(video link at end of post)
Hot Wheels. Hell yeah. The joy of pushing a toy car around isn’t something a videogame can ever capture, but it can come close! Being a licensed game, it’s easy to be skeptical of this. Thankfully, rather than trying to make a quick buck, Firebrand, developers of Trackmania Wii, have put together a great Hot Wheels package here. Track Attack has a good variety of content, with 5 game modes, a track editor and 4 player split screen, there’s some fun to be had.
Speed is an extremely simple arcade racer for Wii, featuring fast cars and high speed explosions.
Initial Play Time: About a half-hour
Game type: Semi-realistic arcade street driving
FlatOut is a budget Wii racer developed by Team6 Game Studios and published by Zoo Games in the USA. Sporting a debut price of $20, FlatOut can be summed up as a Budget Burnout or Casual Burnout – and in some ways this is a good thing, cuz you could’ve done worse by getting $50 of debut-disappointment on any of the FOUR Need for Speed titles on Wii. There are obvious limits on the scope and features of the game, but I could immediately tell Team6 was very serious about this project based on one of the very first screens the game loads: a note on the detectable range of Wii Remote tilting angles.
Pietriots 