The main portion of G1 Jockey follows a fairly droll story, both in terms of writing and presentation. With all the panache and flair of your average Japanese dating sim, your character’s rise to fame is told through ‘conversations’ with paper cutout style characters. These relatively interactionless cutscenes are essentially just there to pull your individual races together. However this glue ends up being more like the flour and water paste made in primary schools than araldite and ends up getting in the way rather than involving you in your jockey’s life.
Most would expect that putting a few ponies through their paces around the track would be a breeze. The reality – well at least this simulated reality – is quite the opposite in terms of the list of knowledge that must be pre-learnt before your first race. Simply entering a race without reading through the provided information about how to coax the best out of each of your mounts will leave you perplexed at the plethora of gauges and symbols. Thankfully there are some incredibly fleshed out tutorials at hand. The only issue with these is there is an hefty amount of reading involved, meaning that if you’re someone with less patience for what is these days seen as an archaic tutorial method, then you’ve got little hope of getting through the lessons and succeeding in the game.
G1 Jockey is the ultimate butt fan's game.
Once you’ve learnt how to decipher the hieroglyph-like symbols on the HUD the racing is actually relatively simple. Manage to balance speed with the stamina of your horse and you’re off to a good start. As both of these have gauges it’s easy to see how you’re going attending to this task. There also is a central dial to show you whether the speed at which you’re ‘driving’ your horse is matching its own personal racing style.
Each horse has its own characteristics and, much like knowing the qualities of your car in a motor racing game, it is important to be aware of both your steed’s strengths and weaknesses. These can be viewed at the start of each race or at the menu screen when choosing your ride. Again, the information is relatively hard to decipher without a trip to the tutorial or manual, but once you’ve gotten used to the presentation everything you need to know is there. A horse that likes to lead for the entire race will maintain its motivation, and thus stamina and speed, if you keep it out the front of the pack. Likewise there are others that prefer to hold back until the final moments of the race before bolting to the front of the field.
The implementation of the Wii controller adds a whole new dimension of interactivity to the series. There are multiple settings regarding the complexity of how you want to control your steed. From the more complex arrangement of using your tilting and flicking of the nunchuck to control the horse to simply using the control stick and the remote as a whip. The C button is used for changing your horse’s lead leg – something you’ll have to do coming into and out of turns to get the best out of your mount. Holding down the Z button will lengthen its stride but tire it out sooner. The fun really happens in the last few seconds of the race when the whipping starts. The whipping of your Wii Remote will signal to the poor beast underneath you that you want to get a final burst of speed out of it. Regardless of how cruel you may feel it is in the real world, there’s plenty of fun to be had getting out of you seat to belt your pixilated pony over the finishing line. Best of all no one gets shot if there’s an accident.
Yeah, i feel just like i know the horse now....
G1 Jockey is not all about flogging your horse until it crosses the line first, there’s also a large focus on the off the track politicking and training that goes on in the lives of those pint sized, helium sucking individuals we call jockeys.
As you progress through the game you are provided with opportunities to become the regular rider for specific horses and stables, as well as the chance to breed, train and eventually race your own pony. Once you breed and name your foal, the hard work of getting it up to scratch begins. Training involves a series of mini-games, each working different skill areas such as stamina, control, speed etc. For example you’ll be asked to match speed with another rider for as long as possible or finish over a certain distance as close to a given time.
The relatively short length of each race leads to some pretty addictive gameplay. As you think to yourself “just one more”, large chunks of time can easily be eaten up over the first few days of having the game. This is coupled with the management of your relationships with stables and more importantly the training your own virtual pet. There is also a two-player mode which let’s you compete in some split screen action against friends in individual races. G1’s gameplay offers quite a bit more than many would expect when imagining a horse racing title. However, with the longevity of G1 Jockey mostly tied up in progressing through what goes on off the racetrack, there will be many that won’t find this compelling enough to hold many their interest.
The stars of the show, the horses, are still some of the best looking we’ve seen.
Whilst the do not rival Agro from Shadow of the Colossus in the personality stakes, their movement is captured beautifully. Beyond the equine protagonists the graphics are reasonably decent but at the same time unremarkable. Menus and the story telling aspects of the game could have used a little sprucing up too.
The transplanting of the latest in the G1 Series over to the Wii has resulted in a pretty enjoyable game. Whilst it may not have the staying power of a lot of its own stars there is quite a bit within the game from races to stable management to keep you busy and coming back, at least for a little while.
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