Champion Jockey: G1 Jockey & Gallop Racer Review

Horse racing is one of the biggest sports in the world, attracting millions of avid punters every year. But, despite numerous attempts by Tecmo Koei to try and stimulate the same market in the world of video games, it's never taken off as a solid concept - well, not until the advent of motion controls. G1 Jockey came into its own on the Nintendo Wii and it's prompted a much bigger response this time around. We've got a renamed franchise and a full-on release with support for every console's motion peripherals. And to be fair to the developers, they've made a decent go of things.

The core of Champion Jockey is the career mode. Here, you'll create a jockey and go through typical seasons in an attempt to win the prized "Champion Jockey" award. It's not all plain sailing though.

You will start off as an apprentice, and will be given pretty standard horses to race with. Each week, you will be given some offers for horses where all you have to do is accept, but you will also be able to spend Rider Points to put your name down for other horses. The catch here, is that it quite often depends on your relationships, so if your relationship is poor, with the horses' stable, they may well give it to someone else and you've then lost your Rider Points.

It's quite an interesting concept, as it means that Champion Jockey isn't just about performing in the race. Various things you do will affect your relationship status with the different personnel in the game, including jockeys, and this will affect the horses you're able to ride.

The best way to improve your relationship is to just win races, or exceed expectations. It gives the owners improved confidence in your ability to perform, so they will naturally pick you above another jockey.

It's a decent mode, although it can start to feel a bit stale after a little while. And when you get to the end of the season and you see that some of the jockeys have done hundreds of races, it shows you the size of the task you'll need to undertake in order to win that coveted Champion Jockey award. The ability to breed your own horses is a nice touch, but the training of the horses can be a bit arduous sometimes. It's better to just use horses that are part of stables in general.

When you start your career, you will also be given a brief tutorial about how the game works, and boy do you need it.

The controls, in theory, are very simple. And this applies to both controller-based play and motion-based play. You increase your speed by riding the horse in time with its rhythm and you decrease your speed by pulling back on the reins. It's not that responsive though and it works more on a "stages" principle. You have a speed-dial, of sorts, but it shows your consistent speed. If you push the horse a bit, the horse will then stay at that speed unless you command it to slow down. None of it is instant though.