G1 Jockey 4 2008 review (PS3)

Being a games reviewer is a double edged sword - writing about a hobby that you love, getting games for free and spreading the good word about unappreciated gems is very much the side of things that gets people into the business.

The downside is that, at one time or another, every budding reviewer has to line up and take ‘the bad medicine’ – i.e. we have to review a rubbish game that is almost physically painful to play.

The past few days have been my time in the shade as I was the one who had the ‘delight’ of putting G1 Jockey 4 into my PS3’s disk slot. Brace yourselves.

Jockey games aren’t exactly flooding the charts year in year out - I suspect that developer Koei knows this. Sure, horse racing isn’t exactly competing with football for gamers’ playing time, but there’s no reason why it can’t offer up a pleasant experience for enthusiasts of the sport of kings and it’s certainly not an excuse not to make an effort.

Sadly though, upon loading up G1 for the first time it becomes immediately apparent that this is exactly what Koei have done, seemingly making no attempt to create a decent horse racing sim for the few fans of the sport that reside within the gaming community.

The first offender, as you might expect, is the presentation. From the bare bones menus to the appallingly lazy story sequences, consisting of still backgrounds and poorly designed cut out characters, before you even get to the act of racing, G1 Jockey seems determined to turn you away.

We really can’t tolerate stuff like this, games should entertain from start to finish, and while we don’t exactly expect big budget visuals for the story mode of a Jockey game, the situation here is so bad that the game almost immediately kills any anticipation you might have had to play it by presenting you with such guff.

If you can forgive G1 of its early offences and decide to commit to the game, disappointment is all that waits.

Before you get into the real pro-Jockey races, you’ll have to graduate from riding school and while this is supposed to act as a training mode, any training it provides you with will be more through luck than instruction.

There are some demos, but with shoddy presentation again rearing its head and confusing explanation boxes that didn’t really give us any clue as to what we should be doing.

Consequently, all of our practice races saw us come home in a distant last. Bizarrely, we still graduated.

Because G1 never really tells you when you’re doing things right and when you’re doing them wrong, when we finally dived into the real races our woes continued. Last place after last place ensued and with them so did what little desire we had to reach the top.

Things weren’t helped along the way by the mind-boggling system of booking races, training horses and organising your week.

After a few hours G1 really does begin to feel more like a management sim than a horse racing game and this left us feeling very cold indeed.

By focusing too much on the organizational aspect of negotiating with trainers, picking which events to race at and visiting your stables, Koei have sapped any potential enjoyment from G1 Jockey 4.

Painfully little time seems to have been dedicated to the actual process of racing and, as a result, it takes several hours to figure out what you need to actually do and subsequently win your first race.

For a game that’s already going to struggle for sales, making the player feel useless was not a smart move.

If you’ve played any of the previous G1 Jockeys, or have an intense desire to stare at horses’ arses all day, then this may be right up your alley.

For the rest of us, well, we can safely go back to our usual routine of having no idea that this series actually exists, secure in the knowledge that we’re not missing out on anything.

2/10

Rhys Simons