Videogame Review, Racers’ Islands: Crazy Racers for the Nintendo Wii Console (Wii Remote and Wii Nunchuck)

Videogame Review, Racers’ Islands: Crazy Racers for the Nintendo Wii Console (Wii Remote and Wii Nunchuck)

There’s no revenge at stake here except that I hope the programmers for this game are okay.  Really, I hope they’re okay.  When my car is driving in squiggly lines and my weapons feel like ants I have to have some pity for the credits as they roll down in our history of video games for what’s likely one of the worst racing games I’ve ever played.  It’s not even a mixed bag; there’s just simply no rhyme and reason to all this lazy racing.  Objects are located in sporadic positions for me to display temper in chasing after goods for defense against… well, nobody really unless I’m lucky.  A game like this makes me want to give the programmers a hug and say, “You’ve really done it bad this time, haven’t you?”  While the controls aren’t painful this time around nothing is effective as far as the eye can see into race course designs with flimsy materials, animals, and disasters that don’t have to wait to happen.  Something is very wrong with this game… I think it’s everything!  My characters are hardly recognizable, my race courses are hardly feasible, the weapons are as bland as bubbles to an old soda… man!  At least I don’t have to pay for the cheeseburgers on the road I’ve crashed into.  Hey, you get what you pay for.  That’s a normal rule of conduct which is violated by Racers’ Islands a million times over with poor visuals that speak less for the controls, which speak less for the poor visuals until there’s this constant shifting of pace between ineffectual gameplay and excessive gameplay; it’s like the difficulty has a challenge on itself for these plain desert-looking courses and even the snow can seem kind of like paper, or paper that can be sped by in a hurry for completion instead of the agonizing, aggravating gameplay.  I admit that the controls get fine and dandy for the task and yet there’s also the poor course design which makes the controls probable for another racing game since I enjoy the idea of slightly tapping the nunchuck’s thumbstick while taking extended curves along the passage ways into a fire-breathing dragon’s… well, boring look.  Dull and boring looks are managed to perfection in this game; that’s a bad thing, because art needs to step over boundaries and present us with flashing illustrations of color that twist reality into pleasing materials for looking, cherishing, and touching, and Racers’ Islands appears to be engineered on a completely wrong scale of good and bad, since the good is really bad and the bad is even worse.  As I’m speaking I feel a lot of pity for the guys who designed this game and maybe my $12 purchase can act as charity for their weak presentation of flavors we happen to see until boredom sets in and we rot or die.  Racers’ Islands only gets the speed of delivery related to freshness correct; what we’re missing is someone who could assure good quality programming on this piece.