There's something about games which use a 'z' instead of an 's' which make us instantly wary - like the Popcorn Arcade, er, "classics" 'Action Girlz Racing', or their 'Kidz Sportz' (Oh god! Double z! Run for the hills!) series. As a general rule of thumb, games with a 'z' replacing an 's' are almost universally regarded as rather terrible 'shovelware'; cheap games which pray on people who don't realise what their buying picking them up by virtue of their cheap price and attractive cover - effectively, judging a book by its cover, and not a respectable reviewer of more family oriented games like us. Of course, there's been a turn up for the books recently, with a few very good downloadable WiiWare games like Motoheroz or Gnomz turning up bucking the trend, but buy and large, poor spelling/grammar hints at what lies underneath...
Pineapplez!
And so enters Jungle Kartz, a - you guessed it - Mario Kart-esque racing game, which sees you steering a series of jungley characters in karts around a load of tracks, littered with perils and power-ups. This alone is part of the problem, as the competition here's stiff - with the likes of Sonic & Sega Superstars Racing, and Mario Kart Wii leading the pack, if it wants to be a real contender, Jungle Kartz has already got its work cut out for it. There's also been a slew of not-quite-so-good-but-still-decent film tie-in games that go down this route too, recently, such as Cars and Madagascar Kartz - meaning if a kart racer wants to make itself stand out from the crowd, it needs to have something to set itself apart from the competition...
Jungle Kartz has decided to take the novel t[r]ack of making itself unplayable using the standard Wii tilting controls - which helps the game get noticed all right, but for all the wrong reasons. Using similar tilty controls on Mario Kart Wii, we usually come first or second (unless we happen to be playing the Wario's Gold Mine level, anyway) pretty much every time - with Jungle Kartz, we were seventh or eighth every single time (out of eight), without fail, often coming somewhere approaching an entire lap behind the computer-controlled opponents. No matter what we tried, it seems the game just doesn't steer properly. Tilt it a tiny bit, and either your car carries on as if nothing happens - tilt it a tiny, fraction of a degree more, and you'll be careering off at a ninety degree angle straight into a wall. When you add in some dodgy physics, which see your car flipping itself spontaneously upon even so much as seeing a bump, and you can imagine it gets rather frustrating.
When the steering wheel isn't even attached to the car, is it any wonder they're so hard to control?
Things improve a bit when you switch to the Wii Remote and Nunchuck controls, seeing as these seem far less finicky - although you'll be hard pushed to notice the difference, as the computer opponents still seem far too good. Especially as now that we're actually in firing range of them, we can see just how little use our power-ups are, simply bouncing off our opponents without hindering them in the slightest. Thankfully, you do at least stand a much better chance at coming in the top three using this method of control - you may as well forget using the Wii Wheel in all honesty...
Another problem - and a big one for a kart racing game - is that the tracks themselves aren't very well designed either. Whereas any deviation from the set route on Mario Kart will have you automatically reset, facing the right direction, Jungle Kartz just leaves you to work it out for yourself. On one level, we ended up in a four-car pile up to the side of the main track when we took a jump wrong - only realising it wasn't where we were supposed to be going when the two computer controlled karts vanished, and there didn't seem anywhere to go. If you stray too close to the sides of the tracks, you risk hitting random invisible protrusions or even just driving straight through a wall and out the other side (a neat little shortcut, I guess - if it led anywhere).
Pumpkinz!
Despite its many flaws though, there are a few glimmers of light in Jungle Kartz. The character designs are quite good (although they do seem a bit heavy on the meerkat-y type things), and seem to be where the vast majority of the time has gone - because presumably, sticking cute animals on the front of a box is a good way to trigger child pester power. There's also quite a few tracks and plenty of 'kartz' to unlock, if you can stomach playing it for that long. As is standard for kart games, there's a four player split-screen multiplayer mode here, and the idea that each character has a track which is it's 'home turf', where they have a bit of an advantage is an interesting one, even if it doesn't really seem to make a lot of difference.
But if anything, these small flashes of competence just makes the general feeling of disappointment you get from Jungle Kartz even stronger. After all, it's not as if we couldn't handle another karting game - we gladly made room for Sonic and SEGA All Stars Racing when it landed, and haven't stopped playing since - but Jungle Kartz could have been so much better. We'd like to say all it needed was a few more weeks in development, but that's not really true, either - it needed tweaking for months to get it somewhere approaching being ready for release.As it stands, Jungle Kartz is a half-broken, half-hearted attempt at a kart racing game - you'd be best off shelling out the extra for Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing or Mario Kart Wii, really. Sadly, the curze of the "z" continuez.
Format Reviewed: Nintendo Wii
