Monster 4 X 4 World Circuit: Review-ish...

I received this game as a present from my good friends John and Rhoda, when I turned 40 last month.

I got it on the same day as I got my Wii, so it was, I suppose, one of my own personal Wii launch titles. It comes with a steering wheel which goes around your Wii remote, so you can actually fully immerse yourself in the driving experience.



The game allows the player to choose from a number of 'whacky' Monster Trucks, e.g. a school bus, Mini, fire truck or VW Beetle. The object of the main game is to race around track against various other vehicles, pulling off stunts on a number of ramps, littered around the course. this is done by pulling the steering wheel towards you in a circular motion, as you go over the ramps (is this making sense?) Pulling off a stunt gives you a burst of Nitro...

If all that isn't hectic enough, there are walls of fire to avoid, which ignite your truck and slow it down. Fortunately you can drive over fire shields, which will prevent your truck from burning.

There are also launchable barrels, which you can chuck at your oponents, slowing them down...

The game is loads of fun and very easy to pick up and play. As well as the main games there are two mini games, Monster Soccer in which you use your truck to try and push a giant ball towards your oponents goal. There is also a combat game called, (originally enough) Monster Combat... which uses the barrel throwing element of the main game as a device for smacking the fuck out of your friend's truck. Lovely!

One gripe, however... On a recent rare afternoon when I had my best mate Tay round for an afternoon's competetive gaming, every time we tried to get the multi-player mode on for a bit of head to head, the game (?) kept switching one of the Wii remotes off. We couldn't actually play in the end, and ended up switching off the Wii and plugging in the Dreamcast for a thoroughly enjoyable session of Fighting Vipers 2, Sega World Wide Soccer (Euro Edition), Daytona USA and Virtua Athlete 2K... No Wii game should send its players running back to an eight year old defunct console (admittedly a fan-fucking-tastic one) should it?

I was sufficiently miffed with this glitch to phone the Ubisoft help-line. What a fucking waste of time that was! I spoke to some retarded Goth who was about as useful as a chocolate teapot!

Any way, I'm not going to let that put me off... There's probably a reason for this that I'm too stupid to understand. Marks out of ten? Probably a seven!

Oh and as an after-thought, this game made me think of the potential of Crazy Taxi on the Wii...

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"