I have spent a week trying to save the universe. Not by leading a hardened team of oddball veterans in an assault on a despot’s intergalactic outpost, nor by completing a series of well-written tasks to build up my warrior mage so they can defeat some ancient malignant omnipotent deity.
I have done it by completing easy races on a bicycle. Sounds ridiculous? Welcome to Wheel World.
It seems the epitome of arch to criticise a video game for its ridiculous plot when I am happy to have plumbers save worlds by stomping on mushrooms, or hedgehogs doing similar while wearing snazzy sneakers. I even took Arbroath FC to the European Cup final in Championship Manager once. But the plot of Wheel World seems so clumsily stuck on I suspect 10% of the code is pure Blu-Tack.
There is a spirit in your bike who looks like a skull and therefore is called Skully. Because it’s that kind of game. You need to win the seven lost parts of his Legendary Bike by beating the cyclists who have them, so Skully can enter the Soul Sewer to reach Mount Send and perform the Great Shift ritual to fly to the moon and save the universe. Just typing that plot makes my fingers vibrate with the clunkiness. It’s lo-fi hipster hippy claptrap. And it didn’t need to be like this.
Ten percent Blu-Tack … Wheel World. Photograph: Annapurna Interactive
The original plot of what was initially called Ghost Bike involved memorials placed by the roadside to mark the deaths of cyclists. That sounds much better but it was ditched in favour of lighter fare. Now, according to the Messhof studio boss Mark Essen, “There’s some silly lore in there, and there’s a creation myth, and deities people pray to, but it’s like, take it or leave it.”
If the people making the game aren’t bothered about the story, how am I expected to be?
But who cares, eh? This is a racing game: they don’t need plots do they? Not if they supply fingernail-munching, edge-of-the-seat rollercoasters of excitement.
But this doesn’t.
It’s not a terrible game, not by any stretch. It’s a decent if far too easy attempt to put Tony Hawk on two wheels in a world that looks like a blander version of Jet Set Radio, and if you have Xbox Game Pass it’s “free”. It passed the “sitting and thinking of it when I am not playing it” test, which is my main indicator if I am in to a game or not. But every time I went back to it, my whelm was distinctly under rather than over. You don’t have weapons or crazy power-ups, there’s no multiplayer mode, you can’t knock other cyclists off bikes (they don’t even seem to be knocked over by cars in the same way you are), and although there are a myriad of witty bike builds, you don’t need them. I completed the game using one that made me crazy fast and one that gave me good grip and handling. That used 14 bike parts. The game has more than 170.
Get your skate on … Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Photograph: Activision
It’s just not escapist enough for me because I can do a lot of the things in this game in real life. I can get on my bike right now, race after another cyclist, ring my bell at him and say: “Hey, Lone Wolf, I challenge you to a race.” Just like you do in Wheel World. Actually, real life may be more exciting because there is a chance the other cyclist will kick my head in for being obnoxious.
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I want games that let me do stuff real life doesn’t.
I loved Road Rash on the Mega Drive because I didn’t have a motorbike. I can play football, but not with the players or tricks I could use in Fifa. I will probably never be the captain of a spaceship – apologies for the lack of ambition – so I loved playing everything from Elite to Mass Effect.
I’m not saying that all games should feature smart bombs and dragons. I get the appeal of farm, train and bus sims: they allow you to take an interest and make it interactive. There are only so many people who can be Network Rail operators in real life, so fair play to you if you want to spend two hours a day doing so virtually. I don’t even mind if you wear a special hat when you do.
I can’t help but feel there is a cool bicycle game out there waiting to be made. The control mechanic will always be imperfect because holding down a button to pedal isn’t remotely realistic, while rotating a thumbstick round and round to make you cycle faster, like a circular-motion version of Track & Field, would get irritating (and painful) really fast.
There could be a cycle courier version of Crazy Taxi, or a game that replicates the joy of having a bike when you are a kid: all about wheelies, backies and clothes-pegging different football cards in the spokes to make a motorbike sound, almost like the bike parts of the wonderful Bully. Until then, I will survive on the memory morsels of Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX on the PlayStation, the original two-wheeled Tony Hawk rip off.
