homierollerz
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Homie Rollerz: it's racing, with Homies
When I played Homie Rollerz at PAX*, two things occurred to me: first, that I am absolutely not the target audience for this game (in that I'm not a fan of the Homies toy franchise) and that it would be amazing and pretty hilarious if the game turned out to be a really good kart racer. The version I played was way too early to make any judgments, but these videos at least show progress being made. There's a second video after the break.Will Homie Rollerz be a Mario Kart killer? Well, no. Probably not, right? Trying to look at the thing objectively, however, and not as a weird licensed game, I can say that I like the track designs. It's got a lot of tunnels, which is interesting and different from the more open-air track designs of Mario Kart. Also it's online, which really makes any game better. I also feel the need to mention burrito car.*I'm not trying to brag about having played Homie Rollerz or anything -- just stating my experience with the title.
New screenz of Homie Rollerz
The version of Homie Rollerz I played at PAX was extremely early; the graphics were rough, and at one point I actually found a shortcut that shouldn't have existed (I'm pretty sure I drove through a mountain). I've never had any particular attachment to the Homies franchise, but I liked the basic concept of a kart-racing game with tricks. These screens of Homie Rollerz look better than the version I played. The burrito car looks exactly like it did in the PAX version, but the environments look more complete. And, to be fair, only one car is a burrito.
PAX 07 hands-on: Indy 500 Legends (Wii, DS), Homie Rollerz, WordJong (DS)
Destineer had a bunch of new stuff on display for the Wii and DS. Indianapolis 500 Legends (Wii) was a racing game with an impressive historical bent. The game starts you in 1961, with each subsequent year to 1971 representing a new difficulty level, and presents (in addition to the full Indy 500) mission objectives based on actual races, organized by driver. Each year has three drivers, and each driver has at least three missions, for about 100 different missions, involving tasks like passing a rival or surviving a crash scenario. The track was modeled on the real Indianapolis Speedway and changes by year to match the authentic appearance at the time; almost every car's engine noise is recorded from that actual model. It's an incredible effort for what turns out to be a not-spectacular-looking Wii racing game with extremely touchy motion-based steering. I kind of got used to it, but we still felt like I was fighting the controls most of the time. The tire-changing pit-stop minigame was fun, though! The game fared quite a bit better on the DS, though-- graphics that were disappointing on the Wii looked much better on the DS, and the game contains the same drivers, missions, and structure. The stylus-based steering works much better in my opinion than waggle. I don't know how interested in historical racing games on the DS you are (I'm usually not very) but I enjoyed my five minutes with it, at least.
