I feel liberated. For the past several weeks, I've reviewed a series of utterly average Wii titles, all of which seemed boring at first but -- when I would least expect it -- clubbed me over the head with something remotely resembling fun. I'd then feel duty-bound to report these instances of fun, and watch perfectly good hit pieces be reduced to wishy-washy 'balanced' reviews.
"Sure, the game's a chore to play through all by your lonesome," I'd find myself writing, "but wait till you check out the hilarious co-op mode!"
"Yeah, it's a three-year old piece of PS2 shovelware, but it's actually kind of fun to reel in the fish," I would relate.
But this week, I don't have to hold back, because there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to save SPOGS Racing from being eviscerated at my hands.
If you were sentient during the mid-1990s, then like it or not you probably know pogs -- the small cardboard discs school-age children used to gamble, trade, and generally use to assert dominance over their peers. And in an age when video games still looked like this...
...it wasn't terribly surprising that children might choose fancy cardboard instead. This trend did not go unnoticed by developer Pronto Games. In an display of mad genius, they decided that over ten years after pogs had been firmly buried in the annals of history, the cardboard coins would be reborn -- as the riders of butt-ugly, translucent racing machines.
Ladies and gentlemen, you are now looking at a very representative sample of SPOGS Racing. That's you in the center, with the four gigantic chrome schlongs and a pathetically underpowered, single-use nailgun. To your left is a rival SPOG which has just activated a pair of booster rockets, guaranteed to leave you in the dust... for about the next ten seconds, at which point the game's utterly ridiculous rubberband effect will kick in, and your speed will visibly increase by at least 20 miles per hour until you catch up.
Directly ahead of you is another rival SPOG, which has likely just used the same effect to pass you -- even though you left him behind only moments earlier.
All around you is the race track, complete with plenty of visible seams; curves so shallow you'll never need to brake, even at 200MPH; walls you can grind along without losing any speed, up until the moment the game arbitrarily registers a crash and brings you to a dead stop; and graphics that, once again, will have you longing for simple cardboard. Imagine effortlessly navigating a track that looks just like this, for several minutes per lap, trading places with fellow SPOGS like clockwork every half-minute, and you now know exactly what it feels like to play SPOGS Racing.
To be fair, there are a few variations on this theme. In "Sudden Death" mode, the addition of weapons means you can ostensibly destroy your foes before they reach the finish line. In practice, though the projectiles never miss, they do so little damage that even in protracted play sessions you'll be lucky to see a single SPOG explode. Meanwhile, most enemy weapons will send you flying, at which point you'll usually impact a wall, and find yourself at a dead stop facing the wrong direction.
In "Crash 'N Grab™" mode, which the developers felt was important enough to trademark but not quite so important that they'd make it a fundamental part of gameplay, you can ostensibly ram into your foes to steal their performance parts. In practice, the game's shoddy collision detection means that most times you bash another vehicle, either nothing happens... or you bounce off, impact a wall, and find yourself at a dead stop facing the wrong direction. When it does work, you can choose one of your opponents' parts to steal, but as your SPOG automatically installs it, you will typically lose control, impact a wall, and find yourself... but I'm sure you can finish that sentence for me.
In "Season" mode, you can accumulate points as you race through all six of the game's tracks. You get points for being in the lead. You get points for passing another SPOG. You get points for how quickly you complete the race, and you get points for performing stunts. Stunts? As soon as I heard the word, golden visions of Mario Kart Wii-like motion-activated bursts of speed danced in my head. However, what SPOGS Racing refers to as stunts are actually existing elements of the track -- like jumps, and loop-the-loops -- that are in no way optional. In fact, if you approach a loop going 40 miles per hour, the moment your tire hits the wooden frame you will put on an uncontrollable, ungodly burst of speed, and lurch forward at about 150 MPH. What this all boils down to is that the objective of Season mode is still to be in first place, because all SPOGS will accumulate the same number of points for stunts, and the rubberband effect will ensure points for lead and passing other SPOGS will even out. Ridiculous -- but not as ridiculous as your sole reward for completing Season mode:
Though the game allows you to save your progress and current score should you quit mid-Season, the moment you finish, that score -- and any indication you beat the game -- disappears entirely. There's no high score chart, no trophy collection, no unlockable content... the only reason anyone will ever know I beat SPOGS Racing is this picture I took with my own digital camera.
And there are far more poor design choices where those came from. But whether you take issue with the crappy draw distance, the poor framerate, the imbalance across control schemes (the Nunchuk analog stick is not only more precise, but actually allows SPOGS to turn harder than the Wiimote alone), the absence of real customization (trademarks not withstanding, the FaceMaker™ mode doesn't actually allow you to Get your face in the race!™ as advertised, merely select from 15 pogs), the lack of rumble or the mere ten minutes it takes to see everything the game has to offer, it's all meaningless when the core racing mechanics are so tightly rubber banded that they are devoid of anything remotely resembling fun.
The bottom line? SPOGS Racing is a god-awful waste of ten dollars and 264 Wii memory blocks; and in all honesty, I had more fun playing Yaris.
Steer clear.
Full disclosure: At time of publication, D2C Games was a client of TriplePoint PR, a firm managed by Richard Kain — owner of our parent company Pantheon Labs.
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July 23rd, 2008 at 7:31 am
[...] Off Road’s gameplay isn’t bad. The game will accept keyboard input, or any gaming peripheral you want to throw at it — a gamepad or driving wheel is easily linked to the game through the configuration utility, providing fully analog control. Piloting your truck is a simple, arcade-easy affair. You’ve got gas, brakes, e-brake, and steering. That’s it — you don’t even shift gears. The controls, as mentioned earlier, are forgiving and simple: despite the dirt and sand roads, you’ll never fishtail more than slightly, the e-brake will let you drift around turns even in massively heavy SUVs, and walls & obstacles won’t ever present more than a minor slowdown — you shouldn’t have to worry about finding yourself at a dead stop, facing the wrong way. [...]
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