Jeep Thrills! (Wii) - Review by Chris

Introduction

The Jeep name is synonymous with the motoring trade and like Ferrari and Lamborghini, through DSi Games, it now gets its own racing title. Jeep Thrills, if you can excuse the awful title, places you in the seat of one of a large selection of Jeep branded vehicles replicated for your racing pleasure on the Wii and Playstation 2. Quietly released in 2008 and published by Zoo Digital, Jeep Thrills acts another budget racing title. But can it be more than just a quick cash-in on unsuspecting casual gamers or does it give you exactly what the title pun tells you?

Gameplay

As with all racing titles, the gameplay mechanics don't need to be explained in any detail. You select your track, you pick your vehicle from the selection and off you go racing a predetermined amount of laps around one of the games many tracks against 5 other computer controlled opponents. It doesn't sound thrilling but the racing genre has gotten away with it from the start and it works well. However, here it feels very lumbered, and this doesn't fall completely on the gameplay. The game will have you race in group races and in each of these you have to finish in the allocated place necessary to unlock the next feature, which is either a tournament or another set of group races. The reason this seems lumbered is because in both the group and tournament modes you'll be racing virtually the same tracks, with some of them in reverse, and you can't help but wonder why they couldn't have brought the two modes together and create a single bigger mode instead of having two which seem fragmented. Aside from these modes, the game harbours the other typical ones found within any racing title, such as multiplayer and custom races along with the ability to look at the times and records you've set on the tracks you've raced on.

The game borrows a few ideas from Excite Truck on the Wii, unfortunately they aren't implemented very well. The boost feature that appeared in Excite Truck turns up here with the only difference being that you don't have to do tricks to fill it up as it regenerates as soon as it is used. However, unlike in the aforementioned game, you don't get any sense of improved speed from using it and so it seems like a wasted inclusion, although it will be helpful especially given how the AI is controlled. The AI is controlled very well and provides a good challenge as they will force their way passed you or try to bash you out of the way. However, while you can be bashed about easily enough, it doesn't seem to reciprocate as you'll find that bumping into your opponents doesn't yield the same effect as them bumping into you.

Controls

For any racing title to be taken seriously, the controls have to be spot on. This isn't the case here. The game is controlled by holding the Wii-mote on its side and you use the 2 button to accelerate and the 1 button to brake. The Wii-mote is then tilted to turn your vehicle but this seems cumbersome and poorly implemented. Titles such as Mario Kart Wii and Excite Truck have show how well the motion controls can be used for a racing title and you would have thought that developers would have taken note but this hasn't been the case and as a result the game really suffers. You'll have to fight to keep control of the car as it seems prone to tail sliding and spinning very easily and neither of these help during race play and it really does feel like you're trying to throw a 18 wheeler round even the smallest of corners. Because of the imprecise nature of the controls, this will happen regularly and you'll also find yourself getting stuck on the scenery because they aren't responsive enough to quick movements of the Wii-mote.

Graphics

As far as budget titles go, Jeep Thrills presents a mixed bag. Tracks and environments lack any imagination or creativity and they're presented in a very low resolution fashion. Backgrounds are presented as static 2d images and while this wouldn't be a huge problem if the game wasn't so low resolution, you'll always notice how bad the background images are as they stand out as being worse than those that could be produced during the N64 era. Likewise, track design and texture work could easily be placed in the same era. However, as I've said, the game is a mixed bag and while the tracks and environments may lack much in the way of detail and show quite a bit of tearing and pop up, the cars are the true showing of what the guys at DSi Games can produce on a budget and are well represented and identical to their real life counterparts. Every little detail you can see on the real thing is present on the in game vehicle which is a nice touch. But what the game gives in detail on the vehicles is overlooked by the very bad frame rate and lag issues that are all too common and at times, it will continue for a prolonged period of time. I realise it is a budget title but this kind of thing really should be present in this type of title as it detracts from the feeling of speed and from the experience.

Sound

As a budget title, you cannot expect to hear licensed material when playing the game but you would hope to hear something better than what you get, that's if you notice it. For the first couple of laps, you'll not notice the music at all and when you do, you'll understand perfectly why you haven't taken notice of it. The music, which is predominantly techno, lacks any true beat or tempo the further the racing experience and is generally forgettable.

Final comments

While the Wii may not have as many racers nor any as prolific as the likes of Project Gotham Racing or Gran Turismo on the two other consoles, it certainly has better than this. As a budget racer, it does stand out by providing some good graphical detail in the form of the vehicles but besides this, the overall experience is lacking. The title may well hold better with younger gamers who are inexperienced with gaming as a whole but with older gamers, they'll quickly be reaching for the power switch. Even at the budget price of £20, what you get isn't a particularly great deal and the likes of Excite Truck can get acquired for less money nowadays anyway and I would certainly recommend going for that over this. If DSi Games could have provided some better controls, it wouldn't have been too bad but as it is, I really can't recommend it to anyone, even to younger gamers.

Pro: Vehicle models are well done and detailed, decent number of tracks and vehicles to unlock
Con: Controls, track graphics and sound are awful, single player mode feels unnecessarily fragmented
Final score: 3.3

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