Rating: T for Teen- If you don’t like seeing blood, then don’t buy this game. It’s got way too much of it and it’s actually unreal. I’m just telling you now before you buy it.
As for a general idea of the game, you
pick a skater and go through some massive levels, collecting the
letters S-K-A-T-E, talking to people
and getting stuff for them, or trying to hit certain things. You then get
medals for your career, and unlock more places and characters. You can
also create your own skater or park (my favorite). Then you can play two-player
or by yourself in these parks with these skaters.
Graphics: *1/2
Maybe Madden and Melee messed with my eyesight, but these “next-generation” graphics don’t impress me that much. Too many polygons, octagons, and blurriness. Not that much stunning visuals. I can’t say the graphics are bad, but they’re not exactly good either. They’re below-average, and to be quite honest, they’re more deserving of the Dreamcast, not the GameCube, which technically has the best graphics processor of all three systems.
Sound: *1/2
I’m not too big a fan of the music in
this game, but maybe some of you may like it. I keep it turned off so it
doesn’t distract me and so I can hear myself think. As for sound effects,
this game does great. The metal, fire, water, spikes, and ground sounds
are on target. The annoying groans a player makes when hitting
something hurt this score a little
bit.
Difficulty: **
This game is about the right place in difficulty. Not too hard, but hard enough. It becomes a little harder if you don’t use one of the cheats, which gives moon physics and lets you jump over stuff you normally can’t, but still remains about the right difficulty. The whole key is landing tricks, and it’s not that hard to do so.
Gameplay: ***
I really like the way this game is played.
Unlike SSX Tricky, in this game it’s possible to do some great (or sick,
if you talk their language) tricks and land them. Sure, there are some
minor troubles like the Slap mini-game, in which it’s very hard to Slap
the other person and sometimes the point goes to the wrong
person anyway. Plus, it’s hard to jump
on rails. But those are the only complaints here.
Controls: ***
Nice and easy. That’s what I want from a game. A jumps, the rest of the buttons do tricks. This category loses a star because I don’t know which button does what and it doesn’t tell me. But that’s okay, because I still pull everything off easily. I think you know the Control Stick goes fast, slows down, turns and moves by now, right?
Characters: no stars
I don’t really care who the heck these guys are, anyway. Steve Callebero? I don’t even care if I spelled his name wrong. Supposedly you can get Darth Maul, but he’s hidden and doesn’t really count.
Parks: ***
They have some really detailed places! I’m impressed with the selection. The only problem is that all but one are locked, and it takes a while to unlock a stage. Please, all game companies, make the tracks available for multi-player use at first!!! Then I won’t get turned off to the game, like XG3! That’s the only complaint.
Create-a-Skater Mode: ***
Here you can choose everything from
a rainbow mohawk haircut to aqua-colored flippers on your skater.
Sometimes the skater gets erased if
you save at the wrong time, though. That’s the only complaint.
Park Editor Mode: ***1/2
Now here’s the best part of this game. You get a lot of area and a lot of pieces to make your own park. I wish there were more pieces for the park, but there are loops, ramps, rails, bowls, fountains, lava, water, spikes, tables, dumpsters, trailers, and more to put in your park. You can even raise and lower the ground. I made one park with a giant pyramid in the middle, and another with tons of loops right after another. The lava, water, and spikes make you restart at your beginning point, so you can place those at strategic points. These parks are available in single or two-player mode.
Two-player mode: ***
This mode lets you go to any park unlocked or a created park and try out one of five games or just skate around. The first is trick attack, which is for points. The second is graffiti, which is when you get a certain object to turn your color if you trick on or off it. The third is slap, when you get points for hitting the other person. The fourth is horse, when you both start at the same point and try to get enough points off one trick that your opponent can’t get that much on one trick and they get a letter. You can choose the word that you play for. The final is king of the hill, where a crown is sitting at one point and you both try to get that crown. Hit your opponent to steal the crown if they have it. Whoever holds the crown for the set amount of time wins. The complaint here? It’s two players. Not three or four, which wouldbe maybe one of the most fun games.
Replayability: *
Something the game lacks in. Once you beat a one-player stage, why go back? And for multi-player, with only five mini-games and two players, not three or four, you’ll have to make a ton of parks to keep this game new. This game’s major weakness is that it gets really old really fast.
Fun Factor!: ***
This game is pretty fun. I mean, it’s more fun than Luigi’s Mansion. Looking back, I was just all caught up in the GameCube excitement back then, with that four star rating in this category. If it had three- or four-player action, believe me, it would be one of the most fun. But it doesn’t.
OVERALL: ***
This three-star rating came up pretty
often in the Review (maybe too much), which again comes up here.
It’s a good game. It's major strengths
are its create-a-skater and park mode, and detailed parks, while it lacks
in graphics and replay value. Overall, it’s worth a buy, in my opinion,
because the one-player mode and created parks last longer than a rent,
but not very long. But it could be better, and maybe you may want to wait
until next year’s version to see if it improves, which would be better
worth your money.