Pit Crew Panic! review - WiiWare World

An extract from the WiiWare World review of Pit Crew Panic!

"Pit Crew Panic! marks the sixth WiiWare release from Hudson and easily their most unique release to date. While the title of the game would lead you to believe that you're in for a little auto racing pit crew action, you'll quickly find that you're in for a very different pit crew experience altogether. Instead of whipping tires on and off the car and topping off the fuel, you're going to be conducting repairs on everything from potted plants to Sherman tanks and everything in between. So does this eccentric take on the pit crew idea translate into an enjoyable WiiWare title?

The premise behind Pit Crew Panic! is quite simple. You're put in charge of a small pit crew and your task is to control each of these crew members and assign them to specific areas of repair on the many interesting items the game tosses your way called WHATSITs. You basically point to the crew member you want to control and then drag them to the faulty part on the WHATSIT that you want them to repair. Once you've completely repaired the WHATSIT, you can then send it speeding out of the garage at which time another broken down WHATSIT comes screeching in to take its place. Although you can get away with merely assigning crew members to tasks, if you want to break the speed records you're going to have to help the crew members out by imitating the movements of their tools in order to speed up their repairs.

There are basically four modes of play, one of which is a simple Training Mode to familiarize you with how the game's play controls function. Normal Mode allows up to 4 players to manipulate a single pit crew as they take on repairs. You can choose to either play a Speed Race to try to get the best time or an Endurance Race to see how many WHATSITs you can repair within a set time limit. You can even set the time limits and number of WHATSITs you'll have to repair to complete each game to your individual liking. Players work together in Normal Mode and each player with a Wii Remote can assign tasks to the various crew members, not to mention help these crew members with their individual tasks. The ability to customize each match gives this mode a lot of flexibility, but the lack of any type of story mode is a bit disappointing." 6/10