Does SPOGS Racing offer the exciting racing experience that WiiWare is lacking so far?
It's no secret that the WiiWare service has been crying out for a racing title and many fans of the genre have already put a lot of hope in SPOGS Racing just from looking at the many inviting screenshots and videos that have been popping up around the internet over the past few weeks. Combining the look of an arcade racer with many of the unique and fun mechanics of a kart racer, the formula used in SPOGS Racing would seem like the perfect combination for a quality WiiWare racing title. Sadly it didn't quite turn out that way as we will find out.
In SPOGS Racing you take control of a SPOG (Sports Player Object Gyros), which is basically a wheel with a face inside and an exhaust pipe protruding from it. You get to go up against other SPOG drivers in various types of events ranging from standard track meets to the Crash 'N Grab races that allow you to smash into opponents and steal vital parts from their SPOG....
GamesRadar: "You remember POGs, right? They were those little collectable cap things that were hugely popular for 15 minutes at some point during the 1990s. We seem to remember them turning up in our breakfast cereal boxes occasionally. So clearly there's never been a better time to reinvent these POGs by sticking them in a single wheel and then building a racer around the whole concept. Clearly. Actually, we wish we'd kept hold of some proper POGs because they'd serve rather well as eye patches, and then we wouldn't have had to witness this, the most insipid racing game since 'My Little Pony: Derby Days'."
Eurogamer writes: "I'm rather disappointed that the top-tier 1000-Point price-tag seems to have become the default for WiiWare games. It's hardly a surprise - human nature being what it is - but even so, with each new batch that arrives, the fond memories of LostWinds and My Life as a King drift further and further away. I thought the 1000-Point screensaver that was My Pokémon Ranch was bad, but little did I know that SPOGS Racing was waiting in the wings.
This is, without question, the worst racing game I've played in - ooh - at least a decade. Seriously. I know that hyperbole is the internet's best friend, and there's an unwritten rule that anything that vaguely disappoints must be colourfully compared to the experience of watching Hitler's ghost sodomising a beloved childhood pet, but SPOGS Racing really is that bad."
It's WiiWare week for Europe again, and this time there are once again two new games available. Although you might as well say it's just one, as one of them was already released in the US and was found to be rather shockingly bad.
The "new" game of the bunch is Pirates: The Key of Dreams, in which you can play as a pirate, sailing the seas, recruiting new men, battling other ships, finding treasure and investigate, all leading to the ultimate goal: Finding the "Key of Dreams". The game is a prequel to the now released DS game Pirates: Duels on the High Seas. Obviously we don't have a review already, but if you want to find out some more about the game, you could read the interview we had with the game's developer, Oxygen Games. The game costs 1000 Wii Points.
Today's other game was released in the USA the week before last and is already somewhat notorious. SPOGS Racing makes you play as "SPOGS Racers", basically wheels with a pog inside (You know them, those things you could get in potato chip bags in the 90's!).....
