Dustbin Diving: Hot Wheels World Tour

After all of that used games shopping spree, I finally opened one of them.

• Game: Hot Wheels World Tour (GameCube)
• Genre: Racing
• The Good: Pretty, oh so pretty. Faithful to Hot Wheels and kid-friendly. Challenge Mode stunts.
• The Bad: Gameplay feels like hovercraft. Play is appropriate for miniature toy cars, though.
• Things I learned: Wii owners! You will need Cube controllers and Cube memory cards to play Cube games. Get them while they are available!

After Forza Motorsports 2, this game was a little hard to play. The racing game is simplistic, yet it seems well-suited for younger gamers and their first racing game. I had to play around with my memory cards, because it only supports Slot A. I love the different environments and the graphics. The Gamecube was never short on graphics quality. Challenge mode is probably the best. It teaches you the basics of play and makes you do some stunts. Fans of Wipeout may find this fun. The fact that the courses change between laps sometimes is neat-o.

I guess my first hint that this game might not be the best is that it was part-and-parcel of a marketing plan by Mattel. It's loosely based on the direct-to-dvd computer-animated movie (perhaps a series?) of the same name. And I'm taking a wild guess that it also tied in with the World Tour toy cars.