Breeders Cup puts you in the owner, jockey, and gambler roles of horse racing. The game shows plenty of promise with the options available but doesn't go deep enough. It seems like it may have been rushed to be out in time for this years Breeders Cup. Does a lower price of $20 allow enough leeway for what the game is lacking? Not totally...
Starting the game up, you'll have 4 game modes to check out: Quick Race, Day at the Races, Challenge a Champion and Career. The Quick race allows you to take control of the jockey and race against other horses. A Day at the Races makes you a gambler from the sidelines as you can test out your betting skills. Challenge a Champion allows you to race against the 'big boys' from the past. Of course the Career mode is where the bread and butter of the game lies. This combines Quick Race and Day at the Races with a little more complexity of owning your own stable.
Running your stable is easy and does have some nice features. The options you are given in the stable menus are retire, breed, cups, news, train, enter race and race day. Retiring your horse is simply what it implies. Breeding actually gives you some control. You are in charge of choosing the sire and dam to mix the qualities of both that you would like your new horse to have. You can't name the new horse, however. The cups menu will show off your display of the various cups that you have won over your career. The news will show everything that has been going on in your stable and how many more qualifying races your horses need to win to make it into the Breeders Cup. Training is an area that is too simple. You are presented with a menu of several training options. You can have your horse work on its speed or gatework or just get some rest before the next race. I thought it would have made sense to have control over the training as a mini-game. For example, the better you do in the training mini-game the more skill your horse will obtain. Entering a race means choosing which race you want your horse to be in for that week. You are presented with a chart showing which races your horse is eligible to enter this week and told what the entry price and purse is. If you don't mind having your horse get bought out, you can enter a claiming race. After choosing a race, you must then select a jockey. You are shown the total races, wins/place/shows, and win percentage for each jockey. Each jockey also has a hiring fee. The confusing part is that the price remained the same no matter how well the jockey is. After you are done making choices, you can choose Game Day.
When you get to the Game Day, you are shown are brief overview of the track you are at this week. Then you are able to make some bets, claim a horse, and race when your horse is racing. Betting is nicely set up and is just like using an automated machine at the track. After making a bet and when not racing yourself, you can watch the race or skip it. This is where I got a little annoyed. If you accidentally choose to watch a race or end up wanting to skip it, there is nothing you can press during a race to skip it. When you do skip a race, it goes to a celebration screen of the winning horse/jockey and then to a results screens showing winnings (the same shown at tracks). And then there is a short loading to get back to the Day at the Races menu. The celebration scene is the same every time so it gets annoying. There should be an option to skip everything for all the races that you are not involved in, betting or racing. Racing involves getting out of the gate as soon as it opens, controlling your horses speed using the left thumbstick while watching your stamina. At the home stretch you can then use your whip to gain some extra speed by timing your pressing of 'A' when it comes up on screen. The quicker you respond the better the response and speed boost.
The graphics, overall, are not that great. The horses don't look too bad but are nothing special. The various racing tracks you can go to look nice but feature a lot of flat graphics. Crowds really take a backseat and are old school cardboard cutouts. A nice touch at least is that you can see moving cars on roads that are behind tracks. While racing, you can see the dirt getting kicked up by the horses. When you get an up close view, however, you can see that it's really flat graphics quickly rising and falling for the effect but doesn't look bad on the dirt. This is also done on the turf and looks aweful. The game also includes several weather effects that can change from race to race (though not dynamically during a race). The effect of the rain falling is not that good. You will see rain drops on the camera and then you will see groupings of rain falling which they tried to blend in but you can still see.
The sound in the game is mostly the commentary. Unfortunately, it does not run together nicely at all. The tone of voice for the horses' names are in a different tone than the rest of the talk. There are some nice touches while in the stable menu, however. You can hear birds and a car going by every once in a while.
Overview
In the end, Breeders' Cup World Thoroughbred Championships has potential but didn't reach it. In some areas they have some nice options while other areas need more depth. It's also a bonus that they included 2-player modes. I would also have liked to have seen a few more tracks in there. For those new to horse racing, tutorial videos will help you out. Coming in at a lower price of $20 helps the game a lot. It's still hard to recommend the game for a purchase unless you're really into horse racing.
