Mini is an all-too-fitting word to describe the effort made in nearly every aspect of this miserable racer.
(-) controls just flat out suck in every conceivable way; some of the worst visuals the Wii has to offer; track design is obnoxious, generic, and frustrating
Top down racing puts an interesting perspective on things. Aside from the standard "finish before the opposition", this allows for some quicker decisions and turning mechanics. And if used correctly, it can be fun for some gamers.
While the idea of racing with mini cars in living room environments could have been interesting, things fall down out of the water with this shoddy effort. Brought to the lucky public by Data Design Interactive, wildly believed to be one of the worst video game companies to grace the world. So it should come no significant surprise to anyone that this game flat out sucks.
When turning this guilty piece of shovel-wear on in your Nintendo Wii, you'll be greeted with some of the most lifeless, generic menus, lacking any sort of polish or excitement. You have a few standard options, like time trials, single races, and tournaments. You'll also have the opportunity to choose between 8 vaguely different mini-cars, which have no important differences between one another aside from a different coat of paint. You'll unlock these cars by getting coins scattered across the level, which destroys the incentive to even win the game, but it makes perfect sense because the unlockables aren't even worth the effort. And you also have six different tracks to choose from, where you'll drive across tables and drive on top rulers for bridges. But each of the six available tracks look, feel, and play exactly the same, and they're about as generic and uninspired as they could possibly get.
And all of that may just be looked past if the game managed to have a somewhat passable controlling mechanic, but that's not the case. The majority of typical Wii racers offer at least the wheel style, turning the remote around on its side. For some crazy reason, the moronic developers thought it would be a good idea to force the player to hold the remote vertically and twist it, while holding on the B button to gas. Why make it control anything like this!? It makes no sense! The car turns too loosely, meaning the slightest twist can send you off the track and to your doom. And above all, it's just not comfortable. Turning with one hand while the other does nothing is barbaric enough as it is, but it can be very straining after a while leaving one hand burdened by the constant twisting. Absolutely awful. And adding insult to injury is how they inexplicably mapped the reverse button to the bottom of the D-pad, which is nearly impossible to readily access the button without stopping. It's just unintuitive, and judging from how god-awful the track design is, you're going to be fiddling with it a lot.
And even if you try to come in terms with the horrid barely-functional controls, the game just isn't any fun. It's about as bland and generic as the gameplay can be, and there isn't a single moment of even artificial and anti-climactic excitement. If the game isn't frustrating, it's boring. There's no going between.
The track design looks as if it was just designed to piss you off. Taking the awful controls into account, you'll often have to squeeze through every small bridges, fighting with the skittishness of the controls to do so. There are also foreign objects bluntly placed at the center of the track, like pencil, erasures, and more. There's also very little warning when a large turn is coming up, so you'll often fly off the level when going full speed because the game doesn't make any kind of sign of what's coming up. And not only are the tracks frustrating beyond comprehension, they're also generic and monotonous. If had a lot of difficulty even telling these tracks apart from one another, because they all feature the same layout, same obstacles, same everything. And they all lack any sort of personality or polish, which is also incidentally lacking in nearly every other aspect of the game. But while you're going to fall off the track time and time again, the AI can range from completely moronic, just willingly driving off the edge in suicide, or trudging through the track with perfection like they don't have to deal with the awful vehicle handling and controls.
Wii game don't need to look amazing, but Mini Desktop Racing is hands down one of the worst looking games that have ever spawned on the system. The camera is zoomed out really far, and you can barely see your car. But everything around is ugly, ugly, and more ugly. The tracks lack any real detail, and animation is shoddy to the point that it could inflict head aches, and with all this, there is STILL slowdown in the frame-rate when there's a single minute of activity going on in the race. To the games credit, it does offer a decent(ish) sense of speed, but that's all but wasted in this game. The music is dull and forgettable, you can barely hear or concentrate on it, and it feels very out of place.
Data Design Interactive is without a doubt one of the worst video game companies to surface. There's no telling why they don't feel the slightest bit of remorse, pumping out shoddy products and infecting the Wii's library, depending on uninformed customers to be attracted by their budget prices and come home and be inevitably ripped off. I really wish the Nintendo Seal of Quality still meant something, because the fact that these games are actually passing through quality control just disgusts me.
Anyone with a decent knowledge of today's entertainment would already know to stay away from Mini Desktop Racing, but for everyone else, STAY AWAY!