Jett Tailfin (Wii U) Review

Jett Tailfin might at first appear to be a decent to good game. It starts with a happy, colourful and, in a positive way, childish start screen, and it will be immediately noticeable that there are a lot of unlockable characters and stages. So far this looks like a full game. However, the charm soon vanishes once the first race begins.

The sole positive point to make about this game is the charming stages and the cheesy cut-scenes that will be enough to make any kid laugh. The stages are very well detailed and feel well made in design, and have a charming choice of themes. The most remarkable ones are the pirate and Atlantis themed stages, which look stunning.

Even though the stages are very well made, the game, however, is not. The gameplay is filled with bugs and it is not uncommon for the game to glitch the player out of the boundaries of the stage into limbo. One certain stage also has a bug that causes the controllable character to become unable to process unless they backtrack due to a really fickle spot-check, which is there to ensure that the player is not cheating, sometimes failing to recognise one has passed.

The open underwater world is also not as open as it seems. This becomes an issue as sometimes it is not possible to swim in the direction wanted, or that thing that looks like a shortcut ends up being a dead end. This severely harms the gameplay, especially the first laps around each level.

Another big flaw Jett Tailfin has for being a party racer is that the weapons are remarkably useless. Every weapon is easily dodgeable by pressing a button on the controller; this is a big problem considering those weapons are meant to be a comeback mechanic. The only weapon that cannot be dodged this way is the minefield that is to the top player's advantage most of the time. This easily causes the person in the lead to simply keep on expanding that lead for the rest of the game, resulting in racing that becomes boring for everyone.

Overall, this is a good looking game, but at times borders on broken due to its poor gameplay. The multiplayer, which should be the main attraction of a racing game, falls flat due to too finely balanced weapons that sadly do nothing against a skilled player. This would be fine if it was not a game that is a Mario Kart clone and a party racer in which case the weapons should serve the purpose of making less able players able to win once in a while instead of further ensuring that the most skilled player always win and the game is not in any way tuned enough to be considered a competitive game. Ultimately, it ends up in a limbo which will not catch the interest of neither competitive nor party gamers.