Just like most media I've been obsessed with throughout, The Amazing Race sneaks up and inserts itself back into my life in a significant way.
After having dipped REALLY in and REALLY out of the show over the course of the 2010s, I completely incidentally caught wind of the premiere for Season 34 while channel surfing the night it aired, and since then my interest in the series as a whole has been reinvigorated. Most seasons are able to offer such a unique cohesive blend of struggles with cultural integration and confronting daring challenges, along with memorable cast dynamics and a compelling amount of drama and tenseness. Every aspect is needed in good measure to coalesce and craft an ideal TAR season that has the show's title match its content. Consider this review as much of an endorsement for the vast majority of the TV show as much it is about the Wii game. In the midst of my current series watch, it occurred to me that I own this game, and that it indeed exists.
Let's start with the bad news upfront: the game in question is Ubisoft-affiliated. And it gets worse: it has the exact same amount of polish and aesthetic similarities to most other mid-tier Wii licensed games. But I should stress that I mean mid-tier Wii titles, and the sheer amount of actual dogshit shovelware on the system should speak to the fact that there is ultimately worse out there, for what it's worth.
Fundamentally, there is some leeway that's deserved on behalf of the developers. The show is genuinely impossible to translate in a meaningful way into a video game from the start, short of being an MMO. From that standpoint, TARWii is still very much a barebones experience, with it being essentially a forced multiplayer mode that has a small minigame collection broken up by simulated travel segments where you choose how to spend the money you receive. Extremely basic, stripped down and not quite fun enough for a race's average length, but if this was hypothetically a game that could serve to later be expanded upon in a sequel or modern console reimagining, this is not an outright bad first step. Hey, ABC's Wipeout has more than 5 games to its name over the span of one console generation, so don't tell me there's no potential in making a good spin on TAR's formula if the team involved was allowed to be ambitious enough.
I've had more fun with this than anyone is history ever will.
Just kidding! I mean to say this game easily clears your favorite media, and you should cry yourself to sleep in knowing that you'll never be better than this shovelware. 10/10 #TARSWiiP
After having dipped REALLY in and REALLY out of the show over the course of the 2010s, I completely incidentally caught wind of the premiere for Season 34 while channel surfing the night it aired, and since then my interest in the series as a whole has been reinvigorated. Most seasons are able to offer such a unique cohesive blend of struggles with cultural integration and confronting daring challenges, along with memorable cast dynamics and a compelling amount of drama and tenseness. Every aspect is needed in good measure to coalesce and craft an ideal TAR season that has the show's title match its content. Consider this review as much of an endorsement for the vast majority of the TV show as much it is about the Wii game. In the midst of my current series watch, it occurred to me that I own this game, and that it indeed exists.
Let's start with the bad news upfront: the game in question is Ubisoft-affiliated. And it gets worse: it has the exact same amount of polish and aesthetic similarities to most other mid-tier Wii licensed games. But I should stress that I mean mid-tier Wii titles, and the sheer amount of actual dogshit shovelware on the system should speak to the fact that there is ultimately worse out there, for what it's worth.
Fundamentally, there is some leeway that's deserved on behalf of the developers. The show is genuinely impossible to translate in a meaningful way into a video game from the start, short of being an MMO. From that standpoint, TARWii is still very much a barebones experience, with it being essentially a forced multiplayer mode that has a small minigame collection broken up by simulated travel segments where you choose how to spend the money you receive. Extremely basic, stripped down and not quite fun enough for a race's average length, but if this was hypothetically a game that could serve to later be expanded upon in a sequel or modern console reimagining, this is not an outright bad first step. Hey, ABC's Wipeout has more than 5 games to its name over the span of one console generation, so don't tell me there's no potential in making a good spin on TAR's formula if the team involved was allowed to be ambitious enough.
I've had more fun with this than anyone is history ever will.
Just kidding! I mean to say this game easily clears your favorite media, and you should cry yourself to sleep in knowing that you'll never be better than this shovelware. 10/10 #TARSWiiP