Hey look, it's a skiing game! Choose from 4 modes of play - downhill, super - G, slalom and super slalom. Regardless of the name your basic goal is to ski between the gates and do it as fast as possible.
Are my goggles fogged up? Damn is it ever hard to see. Whether running normal or 3Dfx mode, the snow is almost pure white with very little shading or texturing. "Snowblind" comes to mind. Seeing the gates is a problem too as even with the draw distance on far they don't appear clearly enough, soon enough. Many times it's too late to make a proper turn by the time you can recognize where the gates are laid out. For a supposedly 3Dfx supported game the graphics are pretty stale. The skier itself is a pretty roughly modelled figure with only the very basic gestures and body motions associated with skiing. The sense of speed is quite good though and you really feel it on the steeper mountains (super-G I think). 3Dfx mode basically just provides a speed-up in framerate with virtually no enhancement to graphics quality. The background is of the surrounding mountains but I found the game to look more realistic with the backdrop turned off (hit the F keys to toggle graphics options). The graphics aren't terrible but they just aren't clear enough to make the game playable.
The sound effects are pretty bland all around. I would imagine it's QUITE windy going downhill at 40 MPH but instead you just hear this slightly whispy, wind noise occasionally. Your skier only has a few sounds like ugh and uh. The sound the skies make carving the snow isn't sharp or gritty enough to seem realistic either. No music but then again it would sound stupid in a game like this.
Control is a problem too. You can either tuck or stand up. In "real" skiing the athletes usually use a slightly upright stance through most of the turns and only tuck on straightaways. In FPS skiing you have to stay tucked all the time or else you are standing straight as a board and about as fast. They should have made it - FORWARD for tuck, MIDDLE for half-tuck and DOWN for standing upright. Carving turns isn't too slick either using keyboard or gamepad as you need variable control like a joystick provides. A joystick just feels too clumsy though for a game like this so you basically have no good choice here. There are also "tricks" which you can perform but I'm not going to even discuss this. When's the last time you saw Steve Podborsky do a 360' while doing a super-G course?
Another game that is sabotaged by graphics and control. First of all you can't tell what's what and second of all it's hard to control when you do figure that out. A year ago these graphics would have been impressive but for this moment in technology it looks flat. I also found that every mountain location whether it was Germany or B.C looked and felt pretty much the same. If you are absolutely DYING for a skiing game then you will enjoy this somewhat but for the majority of us, this game is too flawed to be fun. This game is more fun than skiing into a tree Good stuff:
sense of speed
graphics are ok
Bad stuff:
graphics are ok
sound is dull
control is sloppy
mountains are all the same