[Review] The Amazing Race Game (Wii) Is Not Amazing, Nor a Race. Discuss.

I picked up the Amazing Race game for the Wii at EB Games for $9.99. Man, I feel robbed.

I didn’t read the back of the game thoroughly – I thought I’d be playing this game solo, but turns out this game is meant for two to four players. No problem! I’ll just play the game with the hubs! That should be fun, right? The game is also from Ludia, the developers that brought you the Where’s Waldo franchise for the iPod and PC. Loved that game! This should be good! And this game is hosted by Phil Keoghan – that same dude that hosts the Amazing Race on TV. I love Phil!

But, all the love went out the window when we loaded the game. From the get-go, the Amazing Race theme starts up with montages of couples who are “racing” with you – just like the beginning of the Amazing Race TV show. The couples were animated of course, and in some instances very poorly; we weren’t sure if some of the guys were girls, or the girls were guys. It was cheesy, but figured maybe it was supposed to be…?

The Amazing Race game is like the TV show where you are buddied up, competing in a race around the world; the goal being to be first at various checkpoints. The last team to get to the checkpoint is out of the race. Along the way you are made to play mini games. The games, frankly, sucked, and their instructions were very poorly written and hard to interpret. There were two of us that went to college, and both of us couldn’t figure some of the instructions out. Even then, we just began to play the games to see if we did better, and for the most part we did. But you couldn’t deny the games sucked. In one game, you are throwing tomatoes at people. You aim on a target and use the Wii-mote to throw a virtual tomato at them. The mechanics of this game didn’t exactly work too well – sometimes you couldn’t lock on to your target, or the target just disappears. I mean, Nintendo got this right in their Wii Sports franchise. Couldn’t the Ludia people pay the Nintendo people a nice meal and cocktails to get their secrets to the “throw at the target” game?

And don’t expect this game to be fast-paced. In one instance, the screen shows your team and a competitor fly through the air between two points, and that’s it… for a minute…. and nothing else happens!

Now, imagine staring at this for over a minute. Two white torpedoes flying through the air. Fun!

The game has you and your partner play together, but the hubs and I weren’t sure why. Often, one of us was left to sit there watching while the other did everything. In fact, I’d hazard that a second player really wasn’t needed at all. You were also able to play with four people, but after playing the two-player, I couldn’t possibly subject two more of my friends to this tripe.

The game was from 2010, which was not that long ago! It looked terrible, and played worse. I seriously think Ludia was taking the piss with this game – or totally shitting on a half decent TV show, I’m not sure which…

The Amazing Race (Wii)
Developer: Ludia / Publisher: Ubisoft
Released: 2010

Credits: Walmart