Emerging into its own subculture, much like surfing
or skateboarding, the sport of snowboarding's popularity has
boomed in recent years. With the advent of the winter X Games,
snowboarding has become a sport recognized by the entire
world. Previous to the release of X Games Pro Boarder, PC
users were forced to turn to a console to get their "Xtreme" fix.
While the console games do offer a good degree of fun, they
lack one feature most PC gamers crave; graphics. At last the
PC is being treated as a formidable setup to deliver what the
public wants, Xtreme games. While X Games Pro Boarder
excels in many aspects it also falls short in others.
Features: Proboarder features quite a few of the
worlds best snowboarders such as; Jamie Lynn, Todd Richards,
Tina Basich, Peter Line, and Daniel Franck. 2112 possible trick
combinations are available for you to do on nine courses.
Along with all the realistic tricks you can pull of there is also a
great punk soundtrack with bands like Nofx, Pulley, Voodoo
Glowskulls, Pennywise, and Rancid.
Please keep in mind I used a video card with the
Voodoo1 chipset to review this game, so results may vary with
more powerful graphics cards. Unfortunately the graphics in
Proboarder are a mixed bag. The environments are somewhat
well done, such as the half pipe which definitely creates a
realistic environment with things like ice on the rails. However,
when racing down the halfpipe, I occasionally noticed black
lines in the snow, which looks really ugly and gives the game
an unpolished look to it. Another disappointment is the
character graphics and the crowd animation's. Cheap cheesy
cardboardish animation's are used for the crowd, most of the
people don't even have faces, just a blurry thing on their
shoulders. All of the snowboarders have different boards with
unique art on each of them, which is a real nice touch.
However, most of the snowboarders are roughly rendered and
have a low polygon count. My final complaint is the backdrops
for each level; horrible basically describes my feelings towards
them. In the halfpipe level, the background is barely
noticeable as a mountain and looks more like a blurry white
mess. One of the best aspects of the graphics engine's use of
shadowing. Trees and hills cast very realistic shadows and
even at night shadows cover the courses. When I ran the game
with all the bells and whistles turned to high detail it ran in
slow-motion, frustrating me because I can run games like Half
Life in all its glory without a hitch.
Usually I would love to use my trusty gravis game
pad from 1994 for a game like this, but I found out I really need
to buy a new controller (I still hold onto it for sentimental
reasons). Basically to prepare for a trick you hold down the
trick prep key and go off a jump and hit one of three trick keys.
In addition to hitting a trick key you can add twists and flips by
holding down the directional arrows on your keyboard. I don't
have many complaints regarding to the control setup, I would
rather have had a set trick system much like that in Cool
Boarders 3.The sound track is just about the best aspect of this
game for me personally. I love this compilation of punk bands,
except who is the idiot that put Foo Fighters in with a bunch of
punk bands? Anyhow, as far as sound effects go they are
pulled off rather well. Some of the snowboarders have their
own little things they say when you select them, which is cool.
Moves like grinding a rail and thwacking into a tree sound
surprisingly realistic.
Gameplay consists of several events found at the
X Games, they include; Halfpipe, Mt Bakergap, Stadium,
Slopestlye, downhill, and circuit. The basic concept of the
game is to come in first place and then continue to circuit
mode after you get first in every X Games event. In trick events
like Halfpipe or slope-style you win by getting the most points
by doing the most complicated tricks that you can. Tricks range
from simple tail grabs to 1080 methods. While modes like
downhill racing are included, I opted to skip playing it and just
go for slope style, which is a downhill board park of sorts, with
copings and tables to grind on. Half Pipe is a blast as well, you
race against a couple opponents and attempt to score the most
points by combining fluidity with a bit of luck. AI is average
and it should be for a game like this, the more you crank the
skill level up the better tricks they will perform. As far as fun
factor goes I had a great time playing X Games. My only
complaint is the lack of variation between the different
courses, I would have preferred different slope style tracks like
in Coolboarders 3. This could possibly be a real deterrent for
those of you looking for lasting replay value. Because after you
beat the circuit there isn't much else to do other than slopestyle
and halfpipe.
All types of multiplayer connections are supported,
TCP/IP, IPX, Modem and Serial. With a cable modem host I
suffered almost no noticeable lag at all. However, sometimes
after I completed a race then my opponents did, the game
would instantly tack on thousands of points so I would be in
last place, indicating some lag. Multiplayer TCP/IP is a blast, it
really brought out the competitive spirit in me.
At last someone finally listened to what the people
wanted and made a snowboarding game. All I can say is, its
about damn time! Unfortunately X Games Pro Boarder isn't
everything its cracked up to be and wasn't exactly worth the
wait. Basically all I have to say is, I will still play Coolboarders
3 more often than Proboarder, due to the lasting replayability
of CB3. For those of you who still refuse to buy a console
system I definitely recommend this game to you. Owners of
Coolboarders 2 or 3 might want to think twice about plopping
down 50$ for X Games Pro Boarder.
Minimum Requirements: P166, Windows95, 32MB Ram, 2X or
faster CD-ROM drive,75mb HD space, 2MB PCI graphics card,
and Direct X 5.0.