The Charge:
“Who will win and who will lose? Keep your eyes peeled, cause we’re in for a real treat!” … or are we?

Opening Statement:
The latest iteration of the anime phenomenon is on the Wii with Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Wheelie Breakers, a card battling racer that allows players to duel their way to the top of the pack and the deck.

Facts of the Case:
Based on the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s television show, Wheelie Breakers follows the ascent of an outsider (you) through the ranks of those who engage in “turbo dueling”—a sport in which two or more competitors race around a track on futuristic motorcycles called “Duel Runners” using spell, trap, and monster cards to slow down their opponents so they can reach the finish line first. Race well enough and you’ll face off against series hero Yusei Fudo for the title of Wheelie Breakers Champion.

The Evidence:
Wheelie Breakers is basically Mario Kart with a story. No matter how well you handle your cycle, winning depends on what items you get along the way and how you use them to demolish your opponent. The big difference is that Breakers is more card racer than kart racer. In Mario Kart, items are the same for every racer no matter when they’re used. In Wheelie Breakers, the effectiveness of the items (cards) you play depends on how well you’ve stacked your deck, which cards you’ve unlocked, and what cards your opponent has to play. Like the trading card game on which this is based, Wheelie Breakers (which comes packaged with a special three-pack of cards) has the “collect them all” spirit that enthralls kids and befuddles parents. Doing well depends on your ability to understand how and when to play items with complex rules and tongue-twisting names. Chances are, if you’re not into the card battle scene already, Wheelie Breakers won’t change your mind.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s fans will enjoy the game’s main Story Mode, which pits your racer (who hails from the “Satellite” slum region) against familiar faces from the show. On your way to challenge Fudo for the championship, you’ll battle characters like Akiza Izinski, Hunter Pace, and Leo, while the between-race “cut scenes” (which are basically just text over still character drawings) reveal a mysterious plot involving a shadowy corporation who is watching you with plans to you for… something. It’s your basic fan service, and nonsense to the uninitiated. The real reason to play through the Story Mode is to unlock the ability to buy new and better cards, which give you an advantage against often wildly overpowered opponents. You can also use your cards before the race begins to tune your Runner’s top speed, acceleration, and maneuverability.

At the completion of each Story Mode chapter, you unlock a card, and the ability to play new characters, Runners, and tracks in multiplayer. Whether you win or lose a race, you earn a certain number of points which can be spent to buy new cards you’ve unlocked or more of cards you already have. To get all the cards Story Mode has to offer, you have to play through it twice—things are slightly remixed the second time around, adding new characters and a different final opponent. To get all of the 150+ cards in the game, you’ll need to fulfill a host of requirements that include playing through the four Grand Prix cups, taking on individual racers multiple times (an option you unlock after beating Story Mode twice), and connecting wirelessly with the 5D’s DS game. You can beat the main modes in the game with only a fraction of the cards, but if you really want to play with a full deck, Wheelie Breakers will keep you busy for a long time.

If, however, you couldn’t care less about completing your deck or care more about racing games than Yu-Gi-Oh!, Wheelie Breakers is a tough sell. The card battle learning curve prohibitively high (there’s no in-game tutorial, though the phone book of a manual explains the basics well), and by itself the racing is clunky and unexciting.

The game’s biggest problem is that the motorcycles don’t handle well. The default control configuration is Wii remote and Nunchuk, using the analog stick to steer and the Z and C buttons to accelerate and brake, respectively. The first few tracks are straightforward, and relatively easy to navigate, but some of the later levels have twists and turns that the motorcycles just can’t handle. Even if you brake a lot, you’ll still slam into walls on most turns; and although the game’s physics are on the arcadey side, it doesn’t take much contact with an opponent or the corner of a wall to flip your Duel Runner so you’re facing the wrong way—an easy way to fall out of contention in just about any race.

To make matters worse, sorting through and playing cards from your deck requires that you take your eyes off the road to glance at the bottom right corner of your screen, which makes it even tougher to win some of the later races against opponents who fly easily around hairpin turns and have monsters with the ability to knock your Life Points to zero in two or three hits—causing your Runner to stall out for a few seconds. My first time through Story Mode, for instance, I got stuck in a race against the witch Izinski, retrying the same race for more than an hour until I figured out which one card I needed to save up and spam in the final lap to eke out a win.

Though the game is built around the idea of unlocking newer, more powerful cards, the best way to get through the Story Mode and early Grand Prix cups is to rely on two of the cards you get right away: “Sonic Chick” (a monster with a weak attack but who can absorb tons of damage) and “Rush Recklessly,” which provides a temporary speed boost. It’s too bad “Sonic Chick” is so useful, because I unlocked some much cooler monsters later on. Monsters, by the way, do the key double duty of attacking opponents and absorbing attacks, shielding your precious Life Points. There’s nothing quite as annoying as summoning a monster only to see it vaporize after one hit by an opponent, except perhaps the game’s announcer.

Fans of the 5D’s television show may be disappointed to find that the only voice acting in the game is the race M.C.—a Vegas-style slickster with hair like a loaf of shiny black bread. The rest of the character dialogue is limited to on-screen text. A few more voices would have helped the presentation, especially since the one guy who does talk only has about a half dozen things to say. A few races in, you’ll have all of the M.C.’s soundbites committed to memory, whether you wanted to or not. Aside from the 2-D character drawings between races, the visual presentation is unimpressive. The monsters animate smoothly, and the frame rate is solid, but the character models and cycles have rough edges and the environments are pretty empty.

In addition to the Story and Grand Prix modes, there’s also Matchup mode, which let you race against computer-controlled characters or up to 3 of your friends. The split-screen multiplayer is local only, no online. You can play using either “Normal” or “Survival” rules. “Normal” is your basic first-to-the-finish-line competition. In “Survival,” though, players who lose all their Life Points are immediately eliminated. I didn’t get a chance to try multiplayer, but I imagine it would be a lot more fun than playing against the game’s AI (at least you won’t be the only one slamming into walls). If you’re interested in multiplayer, though, you’d better have more than one Nunchuk or Classic Controller on hand, because the game requires one of those additional controllers to play.

I gave up on the Nunchuk control partway through my first time through Story Mode. It required too much finger contortion to steer, accelerate, and brake all with one hand. In that default configuration, the Wii remote is used for selecting and activating cards (using the D-pad), and for your monster’s attacks (the A button). The only motion control in the game is shaking the remote to flip your Duel Runner around to attack trailing opponents. If you plug in the Classic Controller, you use either the D-pad or analog stick to steer, and the face and shoulder buttons to race, play cards, and attack. I definitely preferred it to the remote/Nunchuk combo.

Closing Comments:
I had a difficult time deciding on a score for Wheelie Breakers. If you’re a big Yu-Gi-Oh! fan, you can add a full point to my score, but if you’re not interested in the license it’s tough to ignore the game’s flaws. As a card battle game, Wheelie Breakers is fine, though it’s too bad the cards from your starter deck are more useful for much of the game than the ones you unlock. The strategy of playing the right card at the right time is engaging, and the hunt for a complete deck will keep fans playing for a long time. But this isn’t a card battler. It’s a racing game. A racing game with messy controls, ho-hum track design, and AI opponents who tend to be either too easy or too difficult to beat.

The Verdict:
This Wheelie is broken.

Platform: Nintendo Wii
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Release Date: May 19, 2009
Rated: E for Everyone