G1 Jockey revew (Wii)

Whatever your personal opinion of the Wii is there’s one thing that can’t be denied and that is how effective it has been at bringing new people into the wonderful world of videogames. Grannies all across the world are now playing tennis with wanton abandon, complete with almost zero risk of needing a hip replacement afterwards; Mothers who originally told little Sam to ‘stop playing on that nasty little game and do your homework’ are now only saying the same thing purely because they can have a go themselves; Dad’s are just happy that they can now show little Sam just how good they used to be at Tennis, how they nearly represented their country when ‘they were a lad’ and ‘that isn’t a forehand…this is a forehand’…followed by the light being smashed and the Wii being banned for two weeks.

Why is that important to G1 Jockey? Well for starters the Wii doesn’t have the typical user-base that most consoles have. The Wii isn’t just for those that are into videogames; the Wii has sold so well mainly because it’s broken down the barriers, is extremely fun at parties and has even managed to convince stoic non-gamers to buy one. Therefore there are a lot of owners out there that just want accessible games and don’t want the need to learn multiple button combinations. It’s to those Wii owners who I would like to warn away from G1 Jockey now.

For those of you who would put Wii Sports in your ‘Top 3 Favourite Games of All Time’ list purely because it’s fun and instantly accessible, please stop reading now, assume I gave the game a 2/10 and cyber-walk away. Seriously you’ll thank me for saving you the time of reading the review and you can go away and play a game of Wii Tennis instead.

For those of you that do want more from your Wii than just mini-game compilations, or are salivating at the thought of there actually being a new game available for the machine, sit down, relax, and enjoy reading why G1 Jockey probably isn’t for you either!

How did I get saddled with this one?

The first thing that struck me when G1 Jockey loaded was how ancient the front-end looked. I mean we’re talking Megadrive standard as far as front-ends go, and even then that’s being harsh to the ‘Black Beauty’. Well that’s a lie! The first thing that struck me was how incredibly stupid I was after I wasted five minutes trying to work out why my Wiimote wasn’t moving the onscreen cursor, only to find out that it doesn’t operate via the motion-sensor and instead requires you to use the D-Pad. Yeah, thanks KOEI, the invoice is in the post for those five minutes.

The second thing (or is it the third…I’ve confused myself now!) was how unbelievably difficult the tutorial instructions were to understand and how insanely hard the tutorial levels were. Feeling like I’d been kicked in the teeth and having had my gaming-manhood firmly deflated, I somewhat tentatively entered the story mode and expected to wander around lost amongst the options for ages and lose comprehensively in my first few races. I wasn’t disappointed.

For those of you that follow horse racing or own a horse yourself, you’ll probably understand the terminology more easily and will feel less flummoxed when presented with the option to ride a ‘Drop-in’ or ‘Hold-up’ horse. For those of us who don’t regularly bet on the nags and who don’t live in the two places left in the UK that still have fields, it’s a lot more difficult and there has been little to no effort to help explain all the many different terms.

Whip me baby one more time

Terminology aside, the races themselves are also incredibly confusing. Knowing when to gallop, when to drive or when to whip the flesh off of the horse in order for it to sprint across the finish line is somewhat of a steep learning curve and will often result in your horse running out of breath before it’s even gone round the last corner, let alone reached the finish line. Even my horse-loving friend (just to clarify, not that type of horse loving but the type where she owns one and enters it into races) found it all very difficult to master and came last or very near the back in her four races.

However a few races in, when it had started to click with me and I had found the optimum distance to drive with each of the four types of horses, I started to win races. Unfortunately once you’ve worked it out the game suddenly becomes quite easy and winning races soon becomes the norm.

This wasn’t always the case; the PS2 versions are notorious for being incredibly hard and were often known as the ‘Gran Turismo of Horse Racing games’, requiring obscene amounts of dedication to progress and be good at the game. However it seems for the Wii version that they have decided to lower that difficult level somewhat. Now that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as stated earlier a lot of the Wii owners out there aren’t normally into videogames and therefore would probably relish a somewhat more relaxed challenge. But I can’t imagine many of those types of players putting in more than an hour before going back to Wii Sports, as the difficulty level is high at the start when it really should be easing the player into the game.

Horseplay

For the sake of the review, I asked three of my friends to come round and play G1 Jockey for a couple of hours. I managed to get together a female friend who owns a horse, loves PC gaming and is considering getting a Wii, a male friend who spends two-to-four hours each week playing on his PS3 and another female friend who generally thinks I’m a geek whenever I start talking about my hobby. The results were not very favourable.

The horse-owning friend found the game dull, very much unlike riding a horse in real life, that the controls were a little unresponsive, that they could have done a lot more with the Wii’s control method, found the multitude of on-screen dials confusing and that she wouldn’t play it again. The male friend also thought that it was incredibly dull, that you spent just over a minute sitting there doing very little and then waved the controller around like a mad man for the last ten seconds, wondered why the horse had a speedometer and oil gauge and that a lot more could have been done with the controller. He also commented that the music sounded like something ‘Scooter’ would produce and kept waiting for a Scandinavian man to tell him to ‘throw his hands up in the air’ and ‘dance to the rhythm of the hardcore beat’. The other friend generally grimaced, kept moaning that she had no idea what was going on and told me in no uncertain terms to go forth and multiply when I asked if she would be so kind as to have another race.

Two hours later and after a handful of multiplayer games, Wii Sports was back out and my living room light was looking nervously on from the ceiling. Multiplayer gaming should be fun, but by the time you’ve explained G1’s game mechanics to your opponent they’ve glazed over and are wondering whether you’re actually John McCririck’s love child.

G 1 - Jockey 0

Now that all sounds very negative and to a certain extent that might be a little harsh, as there is undeniably a huge amount of game locked away in G1 Jockey which should keep fans of the series happy enough with their purchase. But throughout the many hours I spent with the game, toiling through the awfully twee story mode (apparently ‘seeing the winning jockey being handed flowers on the podium inspired me to become a jockey one day’), I couldn’t help but think that a lot more could have been done.

When I got my copy to review I wasn’t expecting jaw-dropping visuals (I wasn’t expecting sub-PS2 standard visuals with missing frames of animation either but I won’t split hairs), I wasn’t expecting an orchestral soundtrack (but again I wasn’t expecting euro-pop nor was I expecting two horses coming together on the course to sound like two cars crashing) and I wasn’t even expecting a game that would have me coming back for more, hour after hour. What I was expecting was a game that utilised the unique control method of the Wii, had you standing in the living room galloping around like some drunk toff after a few drinks pretending to be on a horse and, much more importantly, being incredibly good fun in two player. That just didn’t happen. Sitting still for over a minute with the Nunchuck sitting stationary in one hand, then slowly tipping the Nunchuck back and forward for a few seconds whilst swinging the Wiimote side to side and repeating ad infinitum isn’t exactly my idea of fun. Had the controls required more energy or more interaction then the game would no doubt have been a lot more fun!

The fact that it controls like a PS2 game isn’t really a problem and I don’t usually share the view that many other reviewers do that if a game on the Wii doesn’t feel completely different to other versions then it’s instantly failed. But when a game based on this sport could have been infinitely more fun had they put a little more effort into the control scheme you can only sit and lament over the lack of interaction.

As it is G1 Jockey is far from a poor game, but for many it’s also going to be far from a fun game and I can only think that many Wii owners are going to buy it expecting more interaction than it actually delivers. For those that are prepared to put the time in, train their own stable of thoroughbreds and enjoy a more serene experience, G1 Jockey might be worth a purchase, but it still falls firmly into the ‘try before you buy’ stable.