Skotafactor came to shred the gnar!

[skotafactor]

After finishing my Twin Peaks Challenge, I decided I needed a new adventure to pursue. One of my great loves is extreme sports games, so I figured what better pursuit than trying to platinum/finish them all! There were several years radio silence when it came to skateboarding/snowboarding/etc. games, but now with a recent resurgence, there is quite a healthy pool to pick from. Follow me as I bail, wipe, and scrape a few knees through this radical list. Please let me know if I'm missing any games or you want me to go more in-depth about my experience with anything on this list

 

Currently started:

-Lonely Mountains Downhill

-Tony Hawk: Shred (Plat is unobtainable but there are still 25 possible trophies that I'd like to clean up at some point)

 

 

Finished:

-Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

-BMX Streets: Pipe

-Cool Boarders

-Crayola Scoot

-(Mark McMorris) Infinite Air

-Hover

-Jet Set Radio

-OlliOlli

-OlliOlli 2

-OlliOlli World

-Olympic Winter Games: Vancouver 2010

-Rider's Republic

-Rollerdrome

-Session

-Shaun White Snowboarding (had to use a 2nd console with LAN to knock out the last of the MP trophies!)

-Shredders

-Skate 3 (took some major hoops to get Talking Bout Team Practice)

-Skate Bird

-Skate City

-Skater XL

-SSX

-Steep

-Surf World Series

-Thirsty Suitors

-Tony Hawk: Ride

-Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 (PS3)

-Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 

-Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD

-Wakeboarding HD

 

Queue (In no particular order):

-The Surfer

-Descenders

-Shred Remastered

-Shred 2

-Pumped BMX +

 

DNF:

-Skate 2 - I never made it to Online Legend status before the website that tracked it went kaput. I had crappy internet when it released (I was even still gaming in SD in 2009!) and generally avoided playing online, as much as I loved the game. Some of the most fun I've had plying games online though was knocking out the online freeskate challenges a few years ago to clean up all the obtainable trophies.

-Shaun White Skateboarding - As mentioned, I had pretty crappy internet when this launched. I got the game pretty close to release and servers were already pretty DOA. At the time I hadn't heard of boosting and it never occurred to my dumb high school self that I could probably just ask around on the internet for help getting the online trophies.

 

Not Interested/Shovelware:

-VR Skater - Actually looks pretty fun, but I have little interest in the PSVR2 at this point. My Quest 2 gathers dust for the most part.

-Horatio Goes Snowboarding

-Roller Drama - The gameplay seems much more like a VN than extreme sports game

-Roller Champions - Pretty turned off by the FTP/GaaS model, and from the gameplay I've seen it looks like there's no real trick system as the game's focus is on ball play.

-Tanuki Sunset - Trophies are bugged, plus looks pretty bad

-SNWBRD: FREESTYLE SNOWBOARDING - Looks like absolute ass

-Virtual Surfing

-Downslope

 

I'm sure to some this list doesn't seem exhaustive. I haven't included any motorsports even though the line between BMX and dirtbikes can get pretty razor thin. Those just haven't been games to ever interest me for whatever reason (Trials, MX vs. ATV, etc.) I also haven't included any Winter Sports/Olympic compilations. In my limited experience, there's a lot of them and they're usually pretty mediocre. And finally, I'm not too interested in stacking games. If I finish one stack of a game, I'll most likely move on to a fresh game unless I absolutely loved it. 

 

From here on out I'll give my game-to-game thoughts as I finish them. I'm happy to write-up mini reviews for any others that I've completed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 27 by skotafactor

[skotafactor]

Update, I finished the OlliOlli series! I played through them in reverse order, which turned out to be pretty ideal. 

 

 

OlliOlli World

 

I absolutely loved this game. For anyone interested in getting into the series, this one is a great starting point. It can be incredibly difficult at times, but is generally far more forgiving than early games. The levels feel more varied and the new mechanics like wall-riding and grabs were super welcome additions. I really enjoyed the new art direction, loved how progression always came with new customization unlocks, and felt like the game was paced generally better than early games. The difficulty does spike without warning around World 4, but the addictive gameplay kept me coming back to try one more time. 

 

This game actually inspired me to revisit the early games. I had given them a shot years back but gave up when I couldn't clear the Amateur challenges in the final stages. 

 

 

OlliOlli 2 

 

This game was PUNISHING. Unlike World, timing is absolutely everything with no slack given for little mistakes. You have to learn how to land perfectly or you're going to be sacrificing all of your points, or your life. Similar to World, difficulty spikes at the last Amateur world (Titan Sky), and carries through for much of the Pro campaign. I will say though, that if you're able to make it through Pro, RAD mode is for the most part pretty breezy at this point. OlliOlli2 has a few features that didn't get carried over to World like Perfect launches and Revert Manuals, the latter being one of the biggest combo-ruiners for me. This game really tested my dexterity (I legitimately sprained my wrist playing it and couldn't touch it for a few days) and timing, but finishing it 100% ended up being one of the most satisfying feelings I've gotten from finishing a game. 

 

Side note: I usually don't like auto-pops but I made an exception for this game by utilizing its cross-save feature. 

 

 

OlliOlli

 

And here's where the series started. OlliOlli is missing a lot of key features of its successors (manuals being the biggest omission). This actually makes it easier in some ways. Because your combos are solely restricted to linking with grinds, level goals and high scores aren't as demanding. I will say though- that I found RAD mode significantly more difficult in this game than OlliOlli 2. I don't know if the timing window is smaller or just more inconsistent, but I found myself bailing a LOT even though I breezed through the Pro goals compared to the Pro goals in OlliOlli 2. Overall though, it was a good note to end on since it didn't carry the same level of frustration and demand that the second game did.

[skotafactor]

Another one down!

 

 

Skate City

 

I was excited to play this one because I had played it a little bit on mobile (thanks to a free Apple Arcade subscription through my phone provider), but I've never really enjoyed playing games on my phone. I have to say though, that mobile is the optimal way to play this and the console port is missing a ton of content (half the levels, additional modes, goals and unlockables). With so much content cut out, it made the 100% quite a breeze. In addition, seeing everything on a big screen really highlights all the cracks in the game. Graphically it's not impressive and there can be the occasional break in the physics. This is the first time I've recommended the mobile version over its console counterpart.

 

The game presents in a side-scroller perspective similar to OlliOlli, but takes a much more realistic approach to the physics. Your character pushes much slower, grinds and manuals slow you down a lot faster. Tricks are performed by pushing either thumbstick in one of 8 directions (left for regular tricks, right for nollie), and the shoulder buttons help perform specific grinds, spins, and manuals. There are 3 levels, each with 21 challenges that unlock 3 at a time. Once you've earned at least one star in each of the 3, the next set of 3 will unlock. The game only requires you to 1-star each challenge, but each additional star awards you more skater credits (with a max of 600 skater credits at 3 stars) which are necessary to purchase levels, tricks, and stats that are needed to finish the game. You can sort of soft-lock yourself out of completion by blowing all your credits on cosmetics, though you can earn additional skater credits through freeskate goals and sending footage to sponsors. A much more time-consuming approach, but better than having to start over completely.

 

I did enjoy some of the challenges (the ones where they wanted a specific trick at a specific spot were quite satisfying), and other challenges weren't fun for me at all (racing opponents, escaping cops). Getting one star on each was pretty easy, but to earn two or three could prove pretty tricky on a few of the later challenges. Once you have everything unlocked necessary for 100% though, there's little incentive to go for the higher stars (the cosmetics are pretty weak imo).

 

The bulk of my time was spent in the freeskate goals. Not because they were difficult, but because they were a grind (pun intended). These included circling the map 5 times without bailing (each lap takes several minutes and one mistake can reset your whole progress), manualing 2000m, covering 10000m in the air, etc. I did like the goals that wanted a specific trick or combo with a condition (ex. double kickflip over the stairs) but the really grindy goals ended up putting a bad taste in my mouth. 

 

Overall, Skate City wasn't a bad game, but it wasn't a particularly good game either. If it contained some of the content of the mobile version like the other half of the levels, I could see it being more worth my time. 

Edited October 18, 2023 by skotafactor

[skotafactor]

 

BMX Streets: Pipe

 

This one is a weird one to review because it's essentially a tech demo. It was made by one developer that has been promising a full game for several years now. It's a bit jankier than the likes of other janky sports sims like Skater XL and Session, but pretty impressive seeing that it was a solo endeavor.

 

The game attempts to create a realistic approach to BMX riding, something that has never really been done before. (Mat Hoffman and Dave Mirra games were both arcady in nature). It includes the Pipe (the main level), as well as a training area, a street course called the Community Center, and a single mod map. There are no goals or objectives, you are meant to just freeskate around each area. My favorite map was the Community Center as I tend to gravitate toward street over vert/transition in most of these sims. The trick list is pretty robust, each shoulder button controls a hand or a leg and pressing the right stick in a direction in the air while holding a combination of the shoulder buttons will determine what trick you do.

 

As for the trophy experience, well, it sucked. Half of the trophies are for non-sensible collectibles that required you to get out of the map. One of them included scaling a mountain that was so far away from the level's draw distance that it would have been nearly impossible to find without a guide. 

 

By far the worst trophy, and the reason this sat unfinished in my backlog for so long, was the Technical Wizard trophy. This trophy requires you to do 6 different air tricks and 6 different grinds in one combo with only one manual. It doesn't sound too hard, but most of the tricks take too long to pull off to be usable in the combo and there is only one grindabe ledge in the whole game that is just barely long enough to allow you to get in all the necessary tricks. The game does have a slo-mo feature that allows you time to think through your next trick and how you need to land to do the next grind. Even with slo-mo, it took me several hours worth of attempts. At one point, I thought for sure that this was going to end up in my DNF list. There are a few YouTube videos of people doing it at normal speed, and I can't for the life of me fathom how long they've had to spend with the game to be able to pull that off.

 

As a preview for a potential full game, I have to say it doesn't get me too excited. Realistic extreme sports are really hard to pull off, especially by an indie studio, and even more so by one person. Though I'd admit Skater XL and Session both have things going for them, they are still riddled with jank and bugs in the physics that can take you out of the experience. With Pipe, it's about twice as janky as the two aforementioned games. I had fun with it for a moment, but the fun was often negated with frustration over the bike not hitting the grind I wanted it to or the rider bailing for no discernible reason.

Edited October 19, 2023 by skotafactor

[skotafactor]

 

Surf World Series

 

I figured I should get this one done sooner rather than later since it was a very obscure title that had a multiplayer trophy. I went into this one completely blind, I didn't watch any gameplay or hunt for any reviews. It surprised me to be a pretty competent little surfing game. Historically surfing hasn't translated very well into video games, but the mechanics of this one were fluid enough. You have 4 main grab tricks, each assigned to a face button, that can each be tweaked with 180s or 360s. In addition, you have the ability to perform a floater, quick turns, and ride the tube. You build up a "special meter" of sorts to perform more advanced tricks that require 3 face buttons in succession. This tricks range from difficult to do in real life to arcady, fantastical, and downright impossible for a human to do. A strange inclusion for a game mostly grounded in reality, but the tricks are pretty fun to pull off and add huge increases to your score. The way the meter fills is sort of odd - it fills as you ride the wave. So actually doing air tricks will slow the meter because you're not on the wave, but then landing the air tricks perfectly gives a little boost. I've never seen a special meter in these types of games that fills by NOT doing tricks.

 

The other quirk is how the combo system works. You have 4 seconds from your last trick to pull off your next trick to keep your combo going. Your combo ends either when the timer runs out or when you do the same trick twice in a row. The weird quirk, though, is that the game identifies all the grabs as the same trick. So if you do a nose grab and then your next trick is a tail grab, it will end your combo. However, using 180s and 360s counts as different tricks, so a 180 tail grab to a 360 tail grab will count as a combo. This took me a while to figure out, but once you understand that, it becomes pretty easy to pull off large combos.

 

The game is broken up into 44 events across 5 difficulty levels, each with 3 challenges to complete on top of successfully completing the events. Most of the events and challenges are pretty simple, but a few of the competitions will make you want to pull your hair out. Where the game falls apart for me is in the structure of the events themselves. There are 3 main types: Competition, Big battle, and Survival. The problem is there is little variety between them. Competition and Big Battle are both score-based with Competition requiring you to get above a specific score each round and Big Battle taking the average of your two best waves within a 3-4 min window. Survival is the most unique out of the 3 with your only goal being to survive the wave. 

 

There was one other mode called Set List that only appeared twice. This mode gives you a list of things to do within the duration of the wave and is really fun, and quite a break from the rinse-and-repeat nature of the other events. It's just a shame that it only appears twice.

 

I found Competition to be incredibly frustrating at certain spots. Some comps required 4 rounds, and if you failed any round (you have one life, so a wipeout ends your run) you have to start over from round 1. Sometimes your rider could catch an edge or the wave could break in unexpected ways and then it's back to the beginning. Often times this would be coupled with the most frustrating challenge: no trick repeats. 

 

Like I mentioned before, most of the challenges were pretty straight-forward and could be completed without finishing the level (ride the tube x seconds, do a 5x combo, etc.) with the only two that required you to finish being no trick repeats and no wipeouts on Big Battle. Like the events, the challenges get repeated a lot and could have had a lot more potential to break up some of the monotony. 

 

The trickiest trophy is accruing 100,000 points in a single event, but some of the competitions at the end have 4 rounds where you can pretty easily rack up 40,000 points a round. Apart from that, the completion killer for most is the single multiplayer trophy. It's pretty simple, just win each game mode once. The difficulty lies in the fact that there are less than 1000 people that own this game. I had to scramble to find someone to do this with, so big shoutout to @SurfPatrols for being willing to help out a random stranger that reached out over PSN! 

 

In conclusion, despite its flaws, Surf World Series is probably the best surfing game I've ever played. Is it a low bar? Sure. But it's pretty fun and only minimally frustrating. At times it reminded me of Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer, but it's been so long since I've touched that game that I don't know if that's actually a fair comparison. It was disappointing that it didn't have a platinum, and odd since I was under the impression that it's pretty rare for games with a physical release to not contain a plat. But regardless, the journey to 100% was an enjoyable one and I'd recommend people check it out (there's still plenty of time to be in the first 50 100% earners!)

 

 

[skotafactor]

Wakeboarding HD

 

Wakeboarding is the the only sport on this list that I am somewhat competent at in real life, yet it is one of the most under-represented board sports in video games. I'm not sure why I passed on this game the first time. I remember playing the demo back when it first came out but I don't know why I wasn't interested. It was probably something as silly as it being a PSN title and I wasn't interested in downloadable games at the time.

 

This turned out to be a fun little arcady game that presented quite the challenge at times. The objectives are really varied (especially coming right off of Surf World Series) with each level containing one main goal (that you can either bronze, silver or gold based on your performance) such as collecting x amount of stars, staying off the water for x amount of time, etc. In addition, there are two optional goals in each level (don't bail, dodge a shark, etc.) In order to receive a souvenir for the level, you have to get gold and the optional objectives in the same run. This doesn't prove too difficult for a number of the levels but ends up becoming quite a challenge as you progress. 

 

Surprisingly there's not a ton of emphasis on doing tricks. A number of levels can be completed without earning points at all or through alternative methods (smashing stuff, collecting stars). In fact, some of the challenges straight up discourage you from doing tricks because objectives are so close together that you don't have time to try to do a trick. The only other game I have to compare it to is Wakeboarding Unleashed on the PS2, which encourages the player to string huge combos together while going for the goals. You have a good number of tricks in your arsenal in Wakeboarding HD, but I found myself defaulting to simple front flips and backflips to get my score meter up and slides to reach certain collectibles. 

 

The game has a really low 100% completion percentage, and it's solely because of one trophy: The King of Iron Wake Tournament. This trophy requires you to complete 10 levels in a row (gold plus optional objectives) without failing. This seems like an incredibly unfair trophy - because it is. Though the controls and physics for the most part react how you expect, there might be a time that your boarder decides not to jump off that ramp and instead smack into the side of a house or mountain, completely killing your run. Or you forget that you need to carve at this specific moment. Or you didn't see that shark. Or that barrel. Luckily, there is a little known exploit for this trophy. Quitting to the XMB during a run will save all your progress on your streak up to the start of the run. So if you realize you're not going to make gold or you missed a collectible, you can quit the game and try that level again. People that did the trophy legitimately estimate it took them about 5-15 hours of attempts where the exploit cut my window down to about an hour.

 

I did quite like this game, certainly more than I expected to. The controls are fluid enough (although it wasn't uncommon to get a frame stutter when jumping which could really screw you up) and graphically it holds up pretty decently for what it is. I've certainly played worse looking and controlling games. Getting 100% can feel like a commitment, but the game was enjoyable enough to make we want to see it through to the end.

[irishmonkey77]

On 10/3/2023 at 10:10 AM, skotafactor said:

 

 

Shaun White Snowboarding (had to use a 2nd console with LAN to knock out the last of the MP trophies!)

 

 

 

 

 

How did you do this?? Was this after the servers shut down? I never got around to doing the online back in the day but I would love to do it now if it's possible!

[skotafactor]

15 minutes ago, irishmonkey77 said:

How did you do this?? Was this after the servers shut down? I never got around to doing the online back in the day but I would love to do it now if it's possible!

Most of the online trophies are available through LAN. I believe the only unobtainable trophy is for uploading a replay (though there may even be a workaround for that). So, if you have two PS3s and two copies of the game you can obtain most of the online trophies  Some of them might not even require a second player - you just need to be hosting a LAN game for it to register that you're doing the challenges online.

 

Edit: Just to clarify - the LAN trick only works for Shaun White Snowboarding. I see you already have the plat in that game. Shaun White Skateboarding is unfortunately unobtainable. 

Edited October 31, 2023 by skotafactor

[irishmonkey77]

11 minutes ago, skotafactor said:

Most of the online trophies are available through LAN. I believe the only unobtainable trophy is for uploading a replay (though there may even be a workaround for that). So, if you have two PS3s and two copies of the game you can obtain most of the online trophies  Some of them might not even require a second player - you just need to be hosting a LAN game for it to register that you're doing the challenges online.

 

Edit: Just to clarify - the LAN trick only works for Shaun White Snowboarding. I see you already have the plat in that game. Shaun White Skateboarding is unfortunately unobtainable. 

Ah, dang. I completely misread that lol. That's still cool to know for snowboarding though!

[skotafactor]

2 minutes ago, irishmonkey77 said:

Ah, dang. I completely misread that lol. That's still cool to know for snowboarding though!

Btw totally jealous of your Skate 2 and Tony Hawk Shred plats!

[irishmonkey77]

24 minutes ago, skotafactor said:

Btw totally jealous of your Skate 2 and Tony Hawk Shred plats!

Thanks! I would've loved the German stack for Skate 2 as well but I didn't learn about it until the servers were gone. If you ever need any help with games that I have on my profile, let me know!

[modest_undue1]

Shred that shit! followed  

[skotafactor]

Jet Set Radio

 

I missed out on this one for several years because my brother sold our Dreamcast pretty quickly before I had a chance to save up for JSR. And then when Future launched, we never had an Xbox. In 2015, I decided to rectify that and get the HD remaster for Playstation and pick up a copy of Future to play on my roommate's 360. Since I started them both around the same time, this one really didn't click with me. It felt cluckier, more unresponsive, way more unforgiving and frustrating. I put it down at the start of Ch. III (when each level fully opens up for the first time) and didn't pick it back up until this week.

 

And I'm really glad I did! I had to re-learn the game (despite jumping back in right at Ch. III), but once I got the hang of how to play it, I started having a lot of fun with it. Something that turned me off in my initial playthrough was how the tricking was handled. Tricks were resigned to one button (X), and the game heavily emphasized grinding/wall rides as really the only means to do tricks and combos. There are a few vert areas, but I never stayed in those too long. Once I adjusted my mind away from the format I was used to with other combo-based games like Tony Hawk, I started to appreciate how the tricking mechanic works. Jumping is also quite floaty compared to other extreme sports games, but it ends up helping a lot with lining up rail transfers and landing where I want to land. 

 

The bulk of the game is not focused on the tricks you pull off but rather the tagging you do with your spray paint around the city. This was a pretty fresh approach to a genre that was already starting to get saturated with a large quantity of Hawk clones. Even still there haven't been very many extreme sports games that copied this formula (Go-go Hypergrind and Yanya Caballista steal the cel-shading approach, but the former plays closer to THPS and the later is probably the closest we got to a JSR clone before Bomb Rush Cyvberfunk). The game is really trial and error though in the optimal route to take to avoid enemies and clearing out large walls first. On my first playthrough, I always got absolutely destroyed by police and Golden Rhinos. But after looking up the best routes and understanding the different character stats for different play styles, the game started to feel a lot less frustrating and a lot more satisfying and rewarding. 

 

The trophies themselves are pretty straightforward. Unlike the 360 and Steam versions, there are only trophies for beating Chapters/levels, unlocking characters, and collecting all graffiti souls. Although disappointing, the other versions contain some achievements that seem like they'd be an absolute headache(mainly the one for never getting grabbed). The most time-consuming element is unlocking all characters, as the game requires a specific high score on each level (Jet Rank) to unlock the last 5 characters - which is also tied to collecting graffiti souls. I thought this was going to be a much more daunting process as I was pretty terrible at the game whenI started, but the nice thing is that the game gives you a few different options on how to approach a Jet ranking.

 

You can either pick a Technique (trick-based) character and rack up points through combos while hitting the mandatory spray spots, or you could choose a Graffiti-proficient character. The QTEs become harder and the character can hold less paint, but you score a lot more points for each tag. I opted for the former and it didn't give me too much trouble. The game also got a patch several years ago where you can choose to replay a level at the results screen rather than going straight from results to the next cutscene. Players previously had to quickly quit to the XMB before to be able to retry, so it's nice that you no longer have to reload the entire game with each failed attempt. (Be warned though, if you select "Return to Garage" on a replay, the game will save your best attempt and continue the story.)

 

I ended up having a ton of fun with the game and have already started another playthrough on my Vita (although the analog sticks on Vita make tagging more difficult.) It's a weird game to include in the list, because despite the emphasis on inline skating, the game plays much more like a platformer than a sports title. I've seen it get critiqued a lot on these forums for controls that didn't age well, but I'd argue that they just take a little getting used to, and then can end up feeling quite satisfying. I'd also be remissed if I make it the entire review without mentioning the creative direction. Both the music selection and art direction still set this game apart to this day, and it was pretty incredible to me that a game from 2000 still holds up so well visually.

 

I've pre-ordered the physical release of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk through iam8bit, and now after playing JSR through to completion, I can't wait for BRC to get here!

[Don_Chipotle]

On 12/5/2023 at 12:38 PM, skotafactor said:

Jet Set Radio

 

I missed out on this one for several years because my brother sold our Dreamcast pretty quickly before I had a chance to save up for JSR. And then when Future launched, we never had an Xbox. In 2015, I decided to rectify that and get the HD remaster for Playstation and pick up a copy of Future to play on my roommate's 360. Since I started them both around the same time, this one really didn't click with me. It felt cluckier, more unresponsive, way more unforgiving and frustrating. I put it down at the start of Ch. III (when each level fully opens up for the first time) and didn't pick it back up until this week.

 

And I'm really glad I did! I had to re-learn the game (despite jumping back in right at Ch. III), but once I got the hang of how to play it, I started having a lot of fun with it. Something that turned me off in my initial playthrough was how the tricking was handled. Tricks were resigned to one button (X), and the game heavily emphasized grinding/wall rides as really the only means to do tricks and combos. There are a few vert areas, but I never stayed in those too long. Once I adjusted my mind away from the format I was used to with other combo-based games like Tony Hawk, I started to appreciate how the tricking mechanic works. Jumping is also quite floaty compared to other extreme sports games, but it ends up helping a lot with lining up rail transfers and landing where I want to land. 

 

The bulk of the game is not focused on the tricks you pull off but rather the tagging you do with your spray paint around the city. This was a pretty fresh approach to a genre that was already starting to get saturated with a large quantity of Hawk clones. Even still there haven't been very many extreme sports games that copied this formula (Go-go Hypergrind and Yanya Caballista steal the cel-shading approach, but the former plays closer to THPS and the later is probably the closest we got to a JSR clone before Bomb Rush Cyvberfunk). The game is really trial and error though in the optimal route to take to avoid enemies and clearing out large walls first. On my first playthrough, I always got absolutely destroyed by police and Golden Rhinos. But after looking up the best routes and understanding the different character stats for different play styles, the game started to feel a lot less frustrating and a lot more satisfying and rewarding. 

 

The trophies themselves are pretty straightforward. Unlike the 360 and Steam versions, there are only trophies for beating Chapters/levels, unlocking characters, and collecting all graffiti souls. Although disappointing, the other versions contain some achievements that seem like they'd be an absolute headache(mainly the one for never getting grabbed). The most time-consuming element is unlocking all characters, as the game requires a specific high score on each level (Jet Rank) to unlock the last 5 characters - which is also tied to collecting graffiti souls. I thought this was going to be a much more daunting process as I was pretty terrible at the game whenI started, but the nice thing is that the game gives you a few different options on how to approach a Jet ranking.

 

You can either pick a Technique (trick-based) character and rack up points through combos while hitting the mandatory spray spots, or you could choose a Graffiti-proficient character. The QTEs become harder and the character can hold less paint, but you score a lot more points for each tag. I opted for the former and it didn't give me too much trouble. The game also got a patch several years ago where you can choose to replay a level at the results screen rather than going straight from results to the next cutscene. Players previously had to quickly quit to the XMB before to be able to retry, so it's nice that you no longer have to reload the entire game with each failed attempt. (Be warned though, if you select "Return to Garage" on a replay, the game will save your best attempt and continue the story.)

 

I ended up having a ton of fun with the game and have already started another playthrough on my Vita (although the analog sticks on Vita make tagging more difficult.) It's a weird game to include in the list, because despite the emphasis on inline skating, the game plays much more like a platformer than a sports title. I've seen it get critiqued a lot on these forums for controls that didn't age well, but I'd argue that they just take a little getting used to, and then can end up feeling quite satisfying. I'd also be remissed if I make it the entire review without mentioning the creative direction. Both the music selection and art direction still set this game apart to this day, and it was pretty incredible to me that a game from 2000 still holds up so well visually.

 

I've pre-ordered the physical release of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk through iam8bit, and now after playing JSR through to completion, I can't wait for BRC to get here!

I see dreamcast i upvote, great challenge of clearing extreme sport games!

[skotafactor]

 

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk

 

Oh man, let me gush over this game for a bit. This was an absolute blast from start to finish. It's impossible to talk about this game without mentioning its direct influence, Jet Set Radio. BRC borrows heavily from the Jet Set Radio series (mostly Future, but a few elements from the OG as well) in everything from general presentation to mechanics, mission structure, art style and music. Normally clone games get labelled as rip-offs (and rightfully so), but BRC takes all the elements from their inspiration and improves on them in a lot of ways.

 

The most notable is the trick mechanics. Jet Set Radio Future introduced the ability to grind switch so that you're not stuck doing the same trick on a rail the whole duration (this was present in the THPS series as well). Bomb Rush Cyberfunk took that and cranked it up with the addition of manuals, boost tricks, slides, and a unique combo multiplier that encourages the player to find new corners and billboards to trick off of rather than just looping the same line over and over. It's now possible to combo through an entire stage with ease without being solely dependent on where the next wallride or rail is.

 

In addition, they've also added skateboarding and biking (and some off-board parkour) to the roster alongside rollerblading. They fundamentally handle the same, so the change is mostly cosmetic (aside from each sport granting their own access to secret collectibles), but it was really cool being able to switch between the three and have different trick animations to pull off. They also took the boost dash of JSRF and made it more of a core mechanic, allowing players to use a short boost (X) to redirect their character's momentum, or drain their boost with a long dash that will get them the speed to clear large gaps or help their combos.

 

They've also reintroduced the police from the first Jet Set Radio, for better or for worse. Unlike Future which only had police at very scripted events, the more you tag in a stage in BRC, the more Heat you build up, and the police get more aggressive. This hasn't been a popular mechanic with some players, but since you can lose them at any time by changing your outfit or character, it's really just a mild inconvenience that at least adds some level of difficulty to the game.

 

I played Jet Set Radio, Jet Set Radio Future and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk back to back, and honestly, though I loved them all, this was my favorite of the three. Future is still really fun to play today and without it, BRC wouldn't exist. It might be polarizing to some since they borrowed so heavily in the overall presentation, but what changes they did make to the established formula really make a world of difference and set BRC apart from its predecessors.

 

I'm hoping Sega takes some notes for their new Jet Set Radio game. I'm cautiously optimistic for it, but Bomb Rush Cyberfunk set the bar pretty high for what a game about rollerblading, tagging, and sticking it to the man can be.

[irishmonkey77]

Great progress on your extreme sports project! This may end up in your "not interested" list, but I found a skateboarding game that isn't on your list. "Drifting with Maxwell Cat". It's super cheap on the ps store if you want to give it a go!

[skotafactor]

 

Hover: Revolt of Gamers

 

This is a weird one to include. I originally didn't have it on the list but I picked it up recently because it was on sale on PSN for a few bucks and I was intrigued by the fact that it billed itself as yet another spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio. After playing both JSR games and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, I think comparing Hover to that series is very generous.

 

Hover is n open-world free-running/parkour game where your character can perform tricks such as grinding, air maneuvers (flips and grabs), slides, and wallrides. You'll notice I don't have any other parkour games on the list. It can be a really broad category, especially since so many third person action games today use parkour as a standard traversal method. Do I include Mirror's Edge on this list? Prince of Persia, Assassin's Creed? So for ease of simplicity, I've kept my list pretty focused on games that easily fit into the extreme sports bucket.

 

Hover, despite having a pretty decent trick system, only has one required challenge in the game that utilizes tricking, and it's in the final act. The majority of the game focuses on two challenge types, races and gameball (and a third, gameball races). Races are what you expect. You square off 1 v 1 with an NPC, trying to reach checkpoints as quickly as possible. Gameball is like a janky parkour version of basketball that can be incredibly frustrating. Having such a large focus on these two objective types can get, as you may expect, very tedious and repetitive. There are additional mission types such as spray-painting, catching spy-drones, breaking signs, and delivering packages, but most of these are optional side quests that you can avoid. At times the game won't let you progress until your team has reached a specific level, in which you can use the side quests to help level up (as well as finding collectibles or getting a better score on main missions).

 

The game starts out pretty easy and then you immediately hit a difficulty spike once you enter the second area, the Sewers. The Sewers has 3 Gameball tournaments and 3 races to complete before you can progress. No matter how perfect I felt like I was doing at the first race, I was always around 10 seconds out from being able to finish it within the required time limit. This is when I learned about the importance of chips and boosting stats. You see, Hover has a lot of bloated features that I think were an odd inclusion to a game like this, and the UX/UI is so awful and ugly that it can be overwhelming and you may choose to completely ignore the upgrade system. If you do ignore it though, you'll find yourself hitting a wall and unable to complete challenges.

 

The way it works is once you complete a challenge, your given random chips that can boost specific stats such as your speed, grind speed, ball handling,l etc. Different colored chips yield different percentage of stat boost. Your character has a limited number of slots (and it's different for each character), and once you place a new chip in a slot, it locks the previous chip in. What I mean by that is that you can remove your most recent chip and put it back into your inventory, but all older chips will get lost if removed from their slot.

 

In addition to the chips, you can also earn a pet that will fly around with you and boost specific stats as well. This pet as a hunger and satisfaction meter that is only visible when you pause the game, and if it goes hungry for too long, you'll lose it. Any pets in your inventory keep their hunger stagnant until you equip them, but like the chips, if you unequip the pet, you lose it. Sound complicated?

 

So yeah that is the bulk of the game. It's "Open World" but it's split into 6 areas, Haven City, Sewers, Prison, Administrative District, E-Cop Tower, and Orbital Station. Haven City and the Administrative District are both fairly large and can be pretty fun to zoom around in. Most of the other levels (with the exception of maybe the sewers) are very linear and don't give you a reason to come back to them after you've completed their story objectives.

 

The game can often be confusing where it wants you to go and what it wants you to do, especially in the more open areas like Haven City and especially if you skip through all the poorly written dialogue that plagues every single objective. There is a map that I've found to be completely useless, and there is some wayfinding with an arrow that you can pull up with L1, but it is often obtuse where you you need to go next and you can often get thrown into an objective without an explanation of what to do (which is ironic because some of the more simple objectives like races are usually over-explained).

 

So why does this game consider itself a spiritual successor to JSR? I suppose because both games have you fighting against an oppressive regime through self-expression, both give you the opportunity to spray paint (though it is waaaay more minimized in Hover), both feature traversal mechanics like grinding and wallriding, and both contain music by Hideki Naganuma. And that's where the comparisons end, really. If you put the games side-by-side, it seems really disingenuous to consider Hover a spiritual successor to JSR. As mentioned before, it's trying to do a lot with this upgrade system that ends up being really convoluted and frustrating. The overall aesthetic feels inclredibly generic and uninspired, from character designs to the city blocks that all start to blur together and feel very same-y. The level layouts themselves are also pretty nonsensical compared to the fluid layout of many JSRF's levels.

 

Once you understand the momentum and start jumping around the city, the game starts to feel more like a super-hero sandbox like Crackdown or Saints Row 4 (without the combat) than it does an extreme sports game.

 

There is a large multiplayer component, but I only went online once or twice and didn't find anyone else online. The whole game can be completed in singleplayer/offline mode.

 

The trophies are pretty straightforward, but it can be a bit of a pain to get your pet's satisfaction up if you don't plan it out well. The biggest grind is that you have to collect 206 collectibles around the levels to unlock the secret ending (if you do this before getting the normal ending, you'll get locked out of the normal ending), and then you have to beat the final level again. Whereas most levels allow you to take them at your own pace, the last level (Orbital Station) has no checkpoints and has to be completed in one go.

 

So there you go, Hover was a weird game. I can't really recommend it. It was at least polished enough to finish, and at times I felt myself enjoying it. But I think I would've been fine leaving this one off the list.

 

On 1/14/2024 at 1:36 AM, irishmonkey77 said:

Great progress on your extreme sports project! This may end up in your "not interested" list, but I found a skateboarding game that isn't on your list. "Drifting with Maxwell Cat". It's super cheap on the ps store if you want to give it a go!

Haha thanks for the recommendation! It does look a little too jank and frustrating for me, but good to know that it's out there.

Edited January 15 by skotafactor

[skotafactor]

 

Thirsty Suitors

 

What a wild and unique game. Thirsty Suitors has you play as Jala, a lost millennial who finds herself back home after a nasty break-up, looking to try to repair all the bridges she burned on her way out of town. Jala is an extremely flawed character, and when it comes to love, she's pretty helpless. This game is full of drama, generational trauma, humor, and over-the-top moments. Spoilers ahead.

 

The game is broken up into three core mechanics: cooking, turn-based battles with exes (and Paati's suitors), and skateboarding. For the sake of this challenge, I'm mostly going to focus on the latter but I'll go over what to expect with the other two as the skateboarding is mostly optional.

 

Jala tries to mend things with her stern Indian mother (and very forgiving Sri Lankan father) through most people's weak spots- their stomachs. The cooking minigame is a pretty fun inclusion that has you perform a series of QTEs to try to win your parents' approval. You can also try to tilt the scales in your favor by complimenting your parents (with about a 30% chance of success) or by performing a "super" version of a task, with harder QTE prompts. One of the nice things about cooking is that whatever you make can be used in battle as a buff to either your HP or WP.

 

As you confront your exes, you end up in turn-based battles with them where old wounds are re-opened and everyone puts all their feelings on the line. To expose an enemy's weakness, Jala must use a series of taunts (impressive, thirsty, heartbreaker, etc.) Enemies will be vulnerable to some taunts and unaffected by others. Once Jala has exposed a weakness, you can use a skill that corresponds with the appropriate taunt to inflict damage. The amount of damage you do is dependent on how well you perform the QTE. In addition, the easiest way to defeat opponents is to use the "summon" skill. You will unlock characters like your mom, Soundie the skateboarding cult-leading bear, and your exes Sergio and Diya that can inflict insane amounts of damage on an individual or the entire party, at no cost to your WP. You can only use each once per battle, but they're pretty OP and once you've unlocked them all you can defeat most enemies without touching the taunts (save for bosses).

 

Now let's talk about the part you all care about- the skateboarding. A lot of games that include extreme sports but don't focus on them tend to incorporate them pretty poorly (looking at you, GTA, Bully, and Spyro 3). That really isn't the case here. The mechanics are really well done and feel very familiar. The closest comparison I can make funny enough is yet again Jet Set Radio/Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. Pressing X will perform a flip trick, and R2 + X will tweak a trick. Grinds are automatic once you jump on a rail (no balance meter, similar to JSR) and you can tweak grinds with the left analog stick and R2. In addition to grinds, Jala can perform wall runs, ziplines, natas spins, manuals (and primos), and vaults off of poles. All of these are pretty magnetic which makes for some satisfying lines around the skatepark and downtown. Finally, Jala can also perform a very handy quick-turn both on ground or on rails, walls, or ziplines with the O button.

 

The way it handles combos is interesting and also reminds me a bit of BRC. To increase your multiplier, you have to continue to do tricks off of unique objects (you do up to 5 on one rail I think before it stops adding to the multiplier). Rather than having to maintain the combo with a manual, you have a combo bar that is decreasing and will subtract from your multiplier the longer it takes you add to your multiplier. You can then bank your score by finding a "combo finisher" object and performing the QTE. How you route your combo to have the highest multiplier before you reach a finisher can make a big difference in your banked score.

 

The game includes a number of skate challenges that you can choose to skip, but where is the fun in that? The skateboarding can actually take up a substantial amount of your playtime if you let it. There are 20-something odd challenges that range from traditional score challenges to obstacle courses and collection missions. These can get pretty difficult, especially once you start going for an S rank. I really enjoyed the challenges where they flood the park, which force you to maintain a combo throughout your run. There were one or two challenges I gave up on because the game has manuals and nose manual inputs inverted from the classic Tony Hawk scheme, and my dumb monkey brain couldn't adjust or learn which direction would make Jala do which primo. There's a challenge that includes moving platforms that require a specific manual to be able to land on them that ended up getting the better of me. Since completing it didn't unlock anything substantial, I was okay letting this one go.

 

The biggest critique I can give it is that there are only two spots to skate, the skatepark and downtown (with the skatepark being the more fun and fleshed out between the two). This makes sense given the overall scope of the game, but it would have been nice to see maybe one more skate spot. Another similarity to BRC is that the game includes a few skating dream sequences, really fun platforming that can only be replayed on another playthrough of the game.

 

The presentation for the game is pretty over-the-top. Jala will cartwheel down stairs, do aerials and flips while she's washing her hands, and perform skate tricks that defy the laws of gravity. This compliments the humor in the game well and is a nice contrast to the more serious subjects of trauma caused by Jala to each of her exes. The story isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, especially if you have a more traditional view of sexuality and relationships. I quite liked it though, and I thought it was told in a way that kept me invested in Jala's character arch. I personally can't speak to the AAPI representation in the game or how accurate it is, but even the fact that the protagonist is a non-white woman makes the game stand out on my list (in addition to the fact that it is so story-driven).

 

I'd recommend this game to any fan of the extreme sports genre. Although not the primary game mechanic, it's substantial enough to suck hours out of your overall playtime with the game. Give it a shot!

[skotafactor]

 

Cool Boarders

 

Well this was unexpected. I had taken a break from this project for a bit to, oddly enough, play some classic extreme sports titles out of my PS1/PS2 collection. I actually had the Cool Boarders series in my queue when this unexpectedly dropped on PSN Tuesday.

 

If you don't know, Cool Boarders released on the PS1 waaaaay back in 1996. It was the first snowboarding game on the console and one of the first full 3D extreme sports titles ever made. Released a few years before the Tony Hawk's series, Cool Boarders would go on to have 6 sequels (7 if you count the the PS1 AND PS2 versions of Cool Boarders 2001 as separate games) and inspired dozens of clones. For better or worse, this game really laid the foundation of extreme sports (and especially snowboarding) games for many years. Fun fact, the same rider on the cover of the NTSC-U version of the game also appears on the cover of 2Xtreme.

 

Cool Boarders starts you out with 3 courses, each increasing in difficulty. On each course, you have 3 main objectives: Time (make it to the bottom as quick as possible), Trick (get the highest score from doing tricks), and Score (a combination of your time and trick scores). If you're able to make it to the top of the leaderboard in any of these, you'll be granted a trophy in that course. With enough trophies, you'll start to unlock new courses, boards, and even a secret character. If it sounds pretty bare bones, it's because it is. That's not always a bad thing, though.

 

So how does it play? It's rough. It's really rough. I'm not just saying that as someone playing this game through a 2024 lens. Yes, the game is almost 30 years old and many people have fond memories of it and the series as a whole, but I don't think that justifies a lot of the issues that this game has. The truth is, I've never really liked this game, even back in the day. I've always thought it funny that so many snowboarding games focus on racing when that's such a dilution of the sport as a whole (okay but SSX gets a free pass because that series is amazing). I can excuse stiffness in character handling as there are ways to compensate through the level design, but they don't. There are some really tight corners and insane switchbacks that feel near-impossible to make it through unscathed unless you pick a really slow board. It became rather commonplace for snowboarding games in this era to confine you to a single narrow slope with maybe one or two branching paths (with the exception of the excellent MTV Sports snowboarding games that actually give you a lot of freedom of choice on how to maneuver a course). But what those later games do is at least give you character enough room to carve/turn on a slope without feeling like your frame-locked into an endless loop of bailing down the mountain while you ping-pong off walls.

 

Another big misstep was assigning specific "trick areas" where you could only accumulate points on specific jumps. You can still perform grabs and spins off moguls or wherever you like on the course, but it won't count toward your score. There were a few other games in this console generation that fell into this trap as well, and it feels really restrictive in a sport about creativity and expression.

 

The trick system itself is pretty wonky. You hold X to jump and press a directional button to spin/flip while R1/R2 grabs your board. Where it gets wonky is that once you start holding X, it locks your boarder into a straight line until you jump. This can prove rather problematic as you need to hold X and the d-pad each for a few seconds before launching to have enough height and spin momentum to get any sort of reasonable score. Many of the jumps come right after a turn which doesn't give you enough lead room to do your wind-up before jumping. Even when it is a straight-away, if you realize that you're headed at a slight angle, there's no way to adjust and you'll probably launch off the ramp into a wall.

 

Cool Boarders is a hard game. It was made in a time when developers would often crank up the difficulty to pad out playtime and mask the lack of content. The game only features 5 courses, so with reasonable time/ and trick goals, it could be beaten in 20 minutes. To make sure that doesn't happen, they made the time goals only possible to finish fractions of a second before the high score (at least until you unlock the snowman, who makes quick work of all the challenges in the game).

 

Because of all these factors, the platinum experience can certainly be a bit of a challenge. The trophies themselves are all logical and mostly geared toward overall progression/unlocking, so I need to give this port credit there. The PS1 games on PS5 include a rewind feature, which is going to save many players hours/weeks of frustration from having to start a course over again because your boarder caught an edge or you forgot to dodge a rock. Does it rob you of the satisfaction of dedicating weeks to mastering a course and learning all the ins-and-outs to make it to the finish line by the skin of your teeth? Sure. Are there other games that offer that same satisfaction that are better? Definitely. Try OlliOlli World. Or OlliOlli2. Or SSX.

 

And that's really all there is to Cool Boarders. I know I'm being really harsh on the game. As a fan of the genre, it felt like for a long time it was spoken in the same breath as Tony Hawk, and I don't know if it deserved that level of recognition. I can go back and play THPS on the PS1 and still have a blast, but Cool Boarders really doesn’t do anything for me. Granted, without Cool Boarders there probably wouldn't be 1080 snowboarding, SSX, or any of the countless clones that popped up on the PS1/PS2 that I do legitimately enjoy. Am I glad it got ported to PS5? Sure. Would I play the rest of the series if any of them got trophy support as well? Absolutely. Will I ever touch this one again? Probably not.

Edited March 21 by skotafactor

[skotafactor]

 

Shredders

 

There's been a recent influx in action sports sims. Session, Skater XL, and Shredders are all the latest on the scene, and are all developed by small indie studies without a major publisher backing them. Now, I liked Session, and Skater XL was okay, but they were both riddled with janky bugs and felt more like a tech demo or a promising beginning for an unfinished release. So, when Shredders came along, I was expecting a similar level of quality.

 

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with this game. The mechanics felt super polished and responsive, challenges felt fair, and there are a ton of spots to shred. Mechanically, it's pretty similar to 2016's Infinite Air, but a lot more forgiving and fun. Where Infinite Air had me screaming at the tv over inconsistencies in its physics, a super steep learning curve, and challenges not registering as complete when I knew I did them correctly, Shredders was a relaxing and fun ride. Tricks take a little more thought and planning than a game like Steep, but landings are more forgiving than Infinite Air. Similar to those games, you prep a jump with R2, and during the prep you can wind up a spin or a flip with the respective analog sticks. Grabbing the board uses the shoulder buttons, and you can tweak your grab with the right stick.

 

The game also allows you to call a snowmobile to pull you towards a ramp, which really helps get your speed up for some gaps. In addition, Shredders features a "reshred" feature that allows you to rewind time similar to SSX and correct a previous botched jump. This feature is really nice and certainly helps curb frustration that would exist without it, though it can behave a little odd sometimes. You don't have control over how far back you rewind, generally they try to put you in the last place you were on solid ground. Sometimes they'll throw you right at the edge of a ramp without much time to wind up a spin or jump. Other times you'll be following someone and use reshred, and they'll end up miles away from you (other riders are supposed to be affected by your reshred).

 

While we're critiquing, let's talk about the structure. The game features a loose story mode where you and your best friend have set out to impress a snowboarding company get invited to a sweet Invitational contest. There's nothing wrong with this framework, and it's been used (with slight variation) many times before in this genre. My big gripe with it however, is in the script and voice acting. The cutscenes overstayed their welcome to the point where I started skipping them. Everything is so hammy in its writing and delivery. To make things worse, there is sooo much dialog, yet the characters faces are obscured the entire time by goggles and buffs. One rider even breaks the fourth wall with a joke that he never wears a buff but was given one in the game to cut down on the animation budget. While the challenges in the story are quite fun, the story itself and overall presentation leaves a lot to be desired and is quite disappointing.

 

The other element that hindered the game was how easy it was to exploit. A lot of action sports games fall into the "spin to win" trap. Once you get the hang of how Shredders works, you're going to be able to pull 1440s off small jumps and pull off double and triple flips for insane points. This takes a bit of the challenge out of the game and makes it feel like you can just cruise through most challenges and get 3 smileys without much issue at all.

 

The trophies are pretty easy and straightforward. The only online trophy just requires you to live ride in a private room with one other player (almost exactly the same as Infinite Air oddly). The multiplayer felt pretty unstable despite not being a very old game, so if you want to platinum it, I'd recommend knocking out this trophy sooner rather than later. The rest of the trophies were just knocking out specific challenges, doing specific tricks, and a few grindy ones. They require that you unlock all items in the game. Items are rewarded based on collecting collectibles or your performance in challenges. I was able to knock this out with no issue before I reached the final mountain. The other grinds involve collectibles (hitting gaps and collecting hidden smileys/snowmen) and riding the snowmobile for (ugh) 500 km. That one took a bit of time, but none of the grinds are hard, just time consuming. I ended up spending a lot more time than I needed to collecting smileys and gaps because I didn't realize you can use your drone to place yourself anywhere and instead I opted to snowmobile everywhere.

 

Despite the drawbacks, I had a lot of fun with Shredders. I can see myself coming back to this one quite a bit and really had a blast shredding down the mountains of Elysium and Gnarnia. In fact, all the mountains were well designed with a ton of space, a lot of variety, and really fun lines. Infinite Air relied really heavily on user-generated content, and I felt Steep leaned too much on back country. Shredders strikes the perfect balance between parks and back country.

 

This game gets high marks from me. If you can overlook the super annoying characters and presentation, you have a really fun game that does the sport of snowboarding justice and provides some addicting gameplay.

[skotafactor]

 

Olympic Winter Games: Vancouver 2010

 

Okay, so I broke one of my own rules. I had originally kept this type of game off the list, but i ended up playing through this one anyways. The Olympics are weird. They often incorporate sports that I love in ways that I don't. I don't really care for boardercross (despite its prevalence in snowboarding videogames) or ski jumping, but I recognize the importance of the Olympics in progressing the sports I love. For example, I thought it was awesome that skateboarding was finally included in the summer Olympics in 2021. 

 

As far as Olympics video games go, I said it before but they tend to try to do a lot and don't do any of them particularly great. It's such a strange little niche of the market, and despite being handled by different developers with each release, they all seem to present and play functionally the same way. You're given a small roster of sports to choose from and you can go for gold in each, usually incorporating a QTE, a button mash, or precise timing on a race. Outside of the Olympics games themselves, there are plenty of "Winter Sports" titles that follow the same format in everything but the name.

 

This was the final Winter Olympics title, and the only one to make it on the 7th generation of consoles. The Winter Olympics would live on through Mario and Sonic in 2010 and 2014, as well Steep DLC for Pyeongchang in 2017. I've briefly played the other Winter Olympics titles from 1998-2006 as well as 49Games' Winter Sports series that they spun off of their 2006 Torino entry. How does Eurocom's Vancouver 2010 stack up?

 

It is actually really polished and can be satisfying to play. The physics are really great for the time and graphically I think it still holds up pretty well. Almost every sport has a steep learning curve if you're not used to this kind of game or even how some of these sports function in the real world. Vancouver 2010 has 14 sports to choose from: Downhill, Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super-G, Women's 500m speed skating, Women's 1500m speed skating, Ski cross, boarder cross, ski jumping, aerial skiing, snowboard parallel slalom, luge, skeleton, and bobsleigh. The sports are well made, but there's not a ton of diversity. Super-G and Downhill probably feel really different in real life, but that distinction doesn't translate well to the game. Same with luge and skeleton. They try to better differentiate some of the sports by tweaking the controls slightly. For example, in 1500m speed skating, you have to time when the skate hits the ice on the straightaways. In 500m on the other hand, it's just a constant sprint mashing X. Ski cross and boarder cross are essential the exact same minigame as each other. To stay true to the actual Olympics, there's not much variety in the courses and they get reused for other sports in the game. I understand that they went for accuracy, but that doesn't translate to fun.

 

To get a gold medal in each sport, you have to be really good. The AI is unforgiving, and it can take a while to master each minigame. Sometimes it can be brutally frustrating and there were a number of sports that I only won by a fraction of a second. I've never been really good at button-mashers, so my hands were hurting by the end of my time with the game. It can sometimes teeter on unfair as the level of precision required can be really high. To pad out the gameplay, they also added a challenge mode. There are 30 challenges that add tweaks to each of the minigames. For example, they might swap your left and right controls in boardercross, or make you run into a certain amount of snowmen in Downhill. I actually found these pretty fun and a nice way to add a little variety into otherwise such a short and dull game. I didn't think most of them were too difficult apart from a skeleton challenge where you weren't allowed to touch any walls and the final challenge where you have to lap another speed skater within the first 1000m of the race.

 

The platinum journey was actually kind of nice despite how difficult the game was. This was due largely to the instant gratification. Each one of the 30 challenges has a trophy attached to it, as well as a trophy for gold in each event. So you're going to be popping a trophy every time you make the slightest bit of progress towards the platinum. The other challenging trophy is winning 5 multiplayer online games in a row. The difficulty here is that even with a boosting partner, the game fills in any remaining spots with AI, and they are the same difficulty level as the AI you face in the gold medal challenges. Even when you get good at the game, one small mistake is almost always going to knock you off the top of the leaderboard unless you're able to find 3 other human players to boost. I made the mistake of going for this trophy first before I had played any of the rest of the game, and well, it was not possible for me. I didn't want to waste my boosting partner's time, so I knocked out the single player trophies and got plenty of practice before trying again. By that point, I felt really comfortable in ski jumping and was able to ace that game 5 times in a row.

 

Playing through this did make me interested in checking out some of the other Winter Sports games that have trophy support, though some like Winter Sports 2010 and 2011 were never released in the US and are pretty hard to find (plus 2011 has a lot of online trophies). If I make it through the rest of my list, I may go further down this avenue next.

 

If Winter Olympics are your jam, this is among the best of the games that follow this format. However, if you more just care about skiing and snowboarding, you're going to find yourself stuck playing a lot of some sports you might not care about (looking at you, bobsleigh. Ugh.)  In short, I'm glad I played through this one but I'd be cautious to recommend it. For every frustrating moment with this game though, there was another moment of immense satisfaction of overcoming a hurdle or a challenge that felt impossible.