Pit Crew Panic is one of those games that makes me question the wisdom of the Wii being marketed to casual audiences. On the one hand, we get quality mini game compilations and fantastic motion controlled-adventures. And on the other – we get girls in miniskirts fixing giant toilets. The “point” of this game is to have your team of pit crew girls fix up anything and everything that rolls into their station as fast as they can. You accomplish this by clicking on one of your beskirted girls and dragging the Wii Remote icon over the item to be fixed. The Wiimote will rumble when you’ve come upon a part that needs cleaning or repairing. Holding down B sends your girl over to that part and activates the motion-controlled part of the equation where you’ve got to perform some random gesture with the Wiimote so the girl will do her job faster. These motions don’t sync up with any you’d make in real life to fix a potted plant – more often than not, it devolves into a waggle fest that could potentially injure any of your friends sitting next to you.The game has two modes: a free-for-all “normal” mode where up to four players can pick up a Wiimote and joint in, or a 2 on 2 versus setup called “abnormal” mode. (Yeah, the names make about as much sense as having chicks fixing wedding cakes in a racetrack pit stop.)
I guess this game could be called fun if played with a certain amount of tolerance for the absurd. You can manufacture that tolerance with about six pints of adult refreshment or half a bag of pixie stix (take your pick). But ultimately, if you can’t wrap your head around the concept of girls in miniskirts fixing things that aren’t usually cars in a pit crew, you’d be wasting up to 1000 Wii points on this game (it’s either going to be 1000 or 800 – Hudson hasn’t decided yet). Pit Crew Panic will be out in the “next couple of months.” Maybe in that time, they’ll add more cars to the lineup or possibly tweak the motion controls to make more sense. But even if they do, it looks like that toilet is here to stay.