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IGN Review of Action Girlz Racing
Nearly a month and a half into the new year now, we've mostly reached a point of consensus for opinions on 2008 -- it was a remarkably weak year for Wii. The AAA titles were too few and far-between, the holiday season lacked any standout hits, the library as a whole was awash in vapid, cash-grab shovelware. Now we've been able to wade through most of the muck and mire and come out clean with a respectable selection of the best games released in the otherwise lackluster year, but, in doing so, have we truly respected the spirit of 2008 overall?
Yes, we've honored World of Goo and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii and de Blob -- but was it really all that difficult for those few great games' excellence to be seen? The competition wasn't fierce. No, I argue that we can't truly lay 2008 to rest until we firmly establish the opposite extreme. The worst of the worst. The most vapid, most cash-grabbing, most worthless piece of software to take up legitimate retailer shelf space in the past 12 calendar months. It's time to decide on the Worst Game of the Year. And I give you Action Girlz Racing.
After all, the debate wouldn't be complete without all the contenders, so we'd be remiss if we didn't bring to your attention one last candidate for the title. Action Girlz Racing was brought to us at the very beginning of 2008, too, almost a harbinger of the woes to follow -- it was released by Data Design Interactive and Conspiracy Entertainment in January of last year alongside a whole slew of other top-quality products like Rig Racer 2, Classic British Motor Racing and the sensational London Taxi: Rush Hour. And, in true Data Design style, it's essentially another copy of those same games.
See, Data Design's developers made the decision to go for quantity over quality with their racing titles on Wii, and so came up with just one design -- but then gave it a half-dozen different coats of paint, in order to release it over and over as a bunch of "different" games. If you boot up any one of them, you've seen them all. And, sure enough, Action Girlz has the same menu design, control scheme and overall setup as all the rest. Its closest counterpart has to be Myth Makers: Super Kart GP, yet another effort from the same developer, released just one month earlier, that also bends this same engine toward the kart-racing subgenre.
But Action Girlz Racing is even more woeful than Myth Makers, if you can believe it, because it replicates all the same gameplay faults, adds on a couple more, and then misses the mark on the handful of redeeming qualities that Myth Makers had. There, the characters and setting were at least workable. Here, they're the most shallow and lifeless stars you're ever likely to see in a game.
There's Amber. There's Latisha. There's Courtney. That's about it -- their names are just about the only individualizing aspect of any of them, save their differing hair colors. One of them wears a tiara, though, I think. And another has an umbrella.
With no real personality established for any of the characters, the incentive for unlocking any extra racers dissolves -- who cares about earning more of them when they're all the same to begin with? Ah, but keeping 90% of the game's content locked from the start is part of the standard Data Design package. Heaven forbid you actually give the players of your game more than four characters to start with, or more than a single track to race on.
Yep, that one's true too -- Action Girlz Racing offers but one track to choose from the start. It makes little difference, though, because you won't want to experience any of the others after you suffer through the faults of the first. The camera's placement is too tight, making it difficult to see the road. The track's designs are far too cramped, meaning you'll unwillingly run into walls again and again as curves and turns appear without warning.
Then, with the game's collision and bounding glitches, you're likely to not even stop when you hit the wall -- rather, you'll fly through it and end up in a void of blank polygons. If you're lucky, the game will register that you've left the track and reset you back inside the actual playable area. But you'd probably be less frustrated if it didn't, because any time an event like this occurs (as it does in pretty much every race) you're dropped at a dead stop in 8th place, firmly entrenched in the back of the pack with little chance of restoring your rank.
Want even more evidence of this game's deficiency? Intentional dead-ends. Many of the tracks (once you finally slog through enough races to unlock them) include purposeful tangents that go nowhere. They'll be set up like forks in the road, offering you two different paths -- that's common enough in racers, as even Mario Kart Wii features that. But in Action Girlz Racing, if you pick wrong, you're out of the race. Only one of the paths will actually allow you to continue. The other will greet you with no outlet, forcing you to have to throw your little kart into reverse and, again, firmly entrenching you in the back of the pack.
I could go on. But, hopefully, the case has been made.
©2009-02-11, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Yes, we've honored World of Goo and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario Kart Wii and de Blob -- but was it really all that difficult for those few great games' excellence to be seen? The competition wasn't fierce. No, I argue that we can't truly lay 2008 to rest until we firmly establish the opposite extreme. The worst of the worst. The most vapid, most cash-grabbing, most worthless piece of software to take up legitimate retailer shelf space in the past 12 calendar months. It's time to decide on the Worst Game of the Year. And I give you Action Girlz Racing.
After all, the debate wouldn't be complete without all the contenders, so we'd be remiss if we didn't bring to your attention one last candidate for the title. Action Girlz Racing was brought to us at the very beginning of 2008, too, almost a harbinger of the woes to follow -- it was released by Data Design Interactive and Conspiracy Entertainment in January of last year alongside a whole slew of other top-quality products like Rig Racer 2, Classic British Motor Racing and the sensational London Taxi: Rush Hour. And, in true Data Design style, it's essentially another copy of those same games.
See, Data Design's developers made the decision to go for quantity over quality with their racing titles on Wii, and so came up with just one design -- but then gave it a half-dozen different coats of paint, in order to release it over and over as a bunch of "different" games. If you boot up any one of them, you've seen them all. And, sure enough, Action Girlz has the same menu design, control scheme and overall setup as all the rest. Its closest counterpart has to be Myth Makers: Super Kart GP, yet another effort from the same developer, released just one month earlier, that also bends this same engine toward the kart-racing subgenre.
But Action Girlz Racing is even more woeful than Myth Makers, if you can believe it, because it replicates all the same gameplay faults, adds on a couple more, and then misses the mark on the handful of redeeming qualities that Myth Makers had. There, the characters and setting were at least workable. Here, they're the most shallow and lifeless stars you're ever likely to see in a game.
There's Amber. There's Latisha. There's Courtney. That's about it -- their names are just about the only individualizing aspect of any of them, save their differing hair colors. One of them wears a tiara, though, I think. And another has an umbrella.
With no real personality established for any of the characters, the incentive for unlocking any extra racers dissolves -- who cares about earning more of them when they're all the same to begin with? Ah, but keeping 90% of the game's content locked from the start is part of the standard Data Design package. Heaven forbid you actually give the players of your game more than four characters to start with, or more than a single track to race on.
Yep, that one's true too -- Action Girlz Racing offers but one track to choose from the start. It makes little difference, though, because you won't want to experience any of the others after you suffer through the faults of the first. The camera's placement is too tight, making it difficult to see the road. The track's designs are far too cramped, meaning you'll unwillingly run into walls again and again as curves and turns appear without warning.
Then, with the game's collision and bounding glitches, you're likely to not even stop when you hit the wall -- rather, you'll fly through it and end up in a void of blank polygons. If you're lucky, the game will register that you've left the track and reset you back inside the actual playable area. But you'd probably be less frustrated if it didn't, because any time an event like this occurs (as it does in pretty much every race) you're dropped at a dead stop in 8th place, firmly entrenched in the back of the pack with little chance of restoring your rank.
Want even more evidence of this game's deficiency? Intentional dead-ends. Many of the tracks (once you finally slog through enough races to unlock them) include purposeful tangents that go nowhere. They'll be set up like forks in the road, offering you two different paths -- that's common enough in racers, as even Mario Kart Wii features that. But in Action Girlz Racing, if you pick wrong, you're out of the race. Only one of the paths will actually allow you to continue. The other will greet you with no outlet, forcing you to have to throw your little kart into reverse and, again, firmly entrenching you in the back of the pack.
I could go on. But, hopefully, the case has been made.
©2009-02-11, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved