Donkey Kong Jet Race

Implausible

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If there was a ranked list of possible control schemes for Wii racing games, then I'd put money on the one used by Donkey Kong Jet Race being stuck firmly at the bottom with a note next to it saying it was only included as a joke. It's so painfully horribly bad it makes you wonder how it happened, not because the mechanics behind it are broken (they're not, buttons and hand movements do what they're supposed to and the on screen vehicles respond as expected) instead, and possibly worse, it's bad because you can feel a potentially half decent game ruined by the restrictions of a control system so obviously unsuited to it.

The best way to describe DKJR is to say it's an airborne Mario Kart clone starring Donkey Kong and co racing around on jet powered bongo drums (seriously...) rather than that chubby plumber and his friends in their far more plausible karts. Originally conceived as a GameCube title intended to take advantage of that console's unique bongo peripheral (see, those bongo jets make more sense now don't they) it vanished from view soon after its initial unveiling and was presumed dead by anyone that cared enough to wonder. Until now that is, because up its popped again, this time on the Wii hoping to ride the crest of the motion-sensing wave all the way to the bank. Unfortunately whoever canned it last generation was right; some ideas are just plain bad and the idea of a racing game using drumming as a control method simply doesn't work even if you take away the actual drums just leaving the piston-style arm movements.

Shaking the Wii remote and Nunchuck up and down alternately as if performing a drum roll (imagine how much fun this would have been on actual bongos...) builds up speed while shaking one or the other turns you left or right accordingly, and flicking both upwards causes you to jump. Running that idea through in your head for a few seconds should reveal an immediate problem, how do you turn and accelerate at the same time? To be blunt you can't. Never a good limitation for a racing game you'd have thought and you'd be right. The game tries to get round this by having your character actually steer around the course unaided. All you need left and right for is to dodge or collect things on the track as you go. To make things even simpler you have a maximum speed that when hit turns on the game's equivalent of cruise control so you can stop the incessant pumping of arms and concentrate on moving left and right to avoid obstacles and collect pickups. Yep, that's right; it's racing on auto pilot with a little bit of light steering thrown in to ensure you stay in the same room while the race plays out.

The tracks don't help matters either, having clearly noticed that the requirements of the control scheme has rendered the game horribly un-involving and dull, the designers have decided the best way to solve that problem is to fill the tracks with as much junk as possible meaning you're continually weaving in and out of barriers that seem designed to slow you down and irritate rather than create an enjoyable race.

This all means that the already sluggish speed of the game (even top speed feels strangely slow) is hampered even more because every small collision knocks a bit off your speed, meaning you have to do the shaky shaky again to accelerate up to max speed. Since we've already found that a) You can't steer while you're accelerating and b) The tracks are full of things to hit, you spend a lot of your time stuck in a seemingly never ending loop of crashing, trying to build up speed, crashing again because you can't steer while accelerating, trying to build up speed again only to crash again. It's a vicious circle and no fun at all.

As if the mess of a control scheme and tracks designed to restrict enjoyment rather than promote it wasn't bad enough, the fact that the whole thing is played out in mid air makes it even worse. Even ignoring for the moment the questionable plausibility of things like floating barrels and bananas, not to mention whatever it is supposed to be marking the edges of the tracks, the already crowded and messy circuits aren't made any clearer to navigate through by the environments they 'fly' over. Where as in other games ground-based tracks carve an obvious path through their scenery, DKJR's landscapes roll a few meters under the tracks with every detail (buildings, trees, rocks, etc.) managing to create even more visual confusion as you wonder if you need to avoid things or if they'll pass safely bellow you.

There's more to Donkey Kong Jet Race than a catalogue of problems though, there's a whole variety of on-track pick-ups, a speed boost special move, all the modes and options you'd expect and it comes presented in a perfectly pleasant if uninspired, brightly coloured cartoon kind of a way. Unfortunately since there's absolutely no fun to be had playing the damn thing who really cares about the window dressing. If you belong to that weird subset of racing game fans who feel their life won't be complete till there's a game that enables you to race around the sky using a control method inspired by a love of percussion instruments then you may possibly eek an evening's worth of entertainment out of this, if you're forgiving. For the rest of us there's nothing to see here, keep on walking, someone will be along soon to sweep up the mess.

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By Paul Newcombe