PAX 07 hands-on: Indy 500 Legends (Wii, DS), Homie Rollerz, WordJong (DS)

by JC Fletcher { Aug 25th 2007 at 11:30PM }

Destineer had a bunch of new stuff on display for the Wii and DS. Indianapolis 500 Legends (Wii) was a racing game with an impressive historical bent. The game starts you in 1961, with each subsequent year to 1971 representing a new difficulty level, and presents (in addition to the full Indy 500) mission objectives based on actual races, organized by driver. Each year has three drivers, and each driver has at least three missions, for about 100 different missions, involving tasks like passing a rival or surviving a crash scenario. The track was modeled on the real Indianapolis Speedway and changes by year to match the authentic appearance at the time; almost every car's engine noise is recorded from that actual model. It's an incredible effort for what turns out to be a not-spectacular-looking Wii racing game with extremely touchy motion-based steering. I kind of got used to it, but we still felt like I was fighting the controls most of the time. The tire-changing pit-stop minigame was fun, though!

The game fared quite a bit better on the DS, though-- graphics that were disappointing on the Wii looked much better on the DS, and the game contains the same drivers, missions, and structure. The stylus-based steering works much better in my opinion than waggle. I don't know how interested in historical racing games on the DS you are (I'm usually not very) but I enjoyed my five minutes with it, at least.

WordJong is the DS version of the online tile-based word game. You pull letters off the pile to form words; longer words net you bonuses. With no time limits, it's a nice, low-pressure word game. I have nothing bad to say about WordJong. In fact, I could see someone getting their $19.99 worth out of it.

Homie Rollerz was both very early and a Homies kart racing game. My car was a burrito. I'm willing to look past the technical issues of the game, but my car was a burrito. I have yet to determine whether that's a positive or a negative for the game. It's got to be the first DS game based on capsule toys!

Also on display was the Fullmetal Alchemist trading card game, which keeps the exact rules and card set of the trading card game-- which means that it was way too complicated for me to figure out in five minutes.

John Deere: Harvest in the Heartland is a farming sim that differs from Harvest Moon in both its strict focus on farming (versus Harvest Moon's relationships) and the ability to purchase John Deere farm equipment. There's enough going on here (planting, feeding, cleaning, building barns/coops/etc., all kinds of farmy stuff) that Harvest Moon faithful may actually give it a look. Not being a Harvest Moon or farming person, I just swept up some poop and giggled.

Tags: destineer, fullmetalalchemist, harvestintheheartland, homierollerz, indianapolis500legends, PAX, PAX07, wordjong

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

BPM @ Aug 25th 2007 11:50PM

Blech. A Homies video game... What a waste of time and money...

DeathEater @ Aug 26th 2007 12:21AM

Homies are hispanic so you ride in a burrito. Wow....:/

Psaakyrn @ Aug 26th 2007 12:48AM

Well, that's the problem with "faithful-to-reality/history" games, hint: car racing is actually hard. (and dangerous, though I doubt anyone would really want to experience the trauma, and possible fatility of a crash.)

hvnlysoldr @ Aug 26th 2007 1:47AM

That's what I keep thinking with Wii games. You can't really do this in real life so it would be freaking physically limiting to perform the game.

ThornedVenom @ Aug 26th 2007 9:20AM

Realistic car racing to be coupled with a realistic Trauma Center!!! xD

Vexorg @ Aug 26th 2007 2:03AM

I tried out Homie Rollerz as well, and I'd like to know whose bright idea it was to put that one out on the floor of a heavily attended tradeshow in the first place. The game was running at about 5FPS the whole time, with even choppier car animations and low-res textures (Granted, you have to work with the limitations of the DS, but this one looks just plain lazy.) I think I'm putting the over/under on review scores somewhere in the range of 3.5...

Umbris @ Aug 27th 2007 8:43AM

Actually I was disappointed when I read this and it didn't talk about WordJong at all. Dude that game is addicting. I got the download from them yesterday and played it a ton last night.

I wasn't too impressed with Homies either, but they did tell me beforehand that it wasn't even at Beta yet so... *shrugs* I guess it's got possiblities, but I agree that it totally needs some improvements.

John Deere isn't my type of game, but it looked a ton like Harvest Moon (which isn't a bad thing I guess). I played the Fullmetal card game (although I've never seen a single episode) and thought it was pretty cool and plan on buying it, being that I'm a ccg fan.

Indy on the other hand I had fun with on the Wii (I didn't play the DS one). To be honest I could care less about being overly picky about the graphics. I get really tired of everyone complaining about graphics this and graphics that... seriously if the gameplay sucks the graphics doesn't mean crap. I mean Lost Planet looked fricking awesome, but got old after 2 levels (and the gameplay sucked hardcore to boot).

Developers need to get back to the basics and stop treating us gamers like we are eye candy loving idiots. If I'm going to drop 50-60 bills on a game it had better play awesome first and foremost.

Thanks for letting me rant a little ;).