TrickStyle

"The good graphics and brilliant level design don't make up for this games major flaws in the gameplay department"

Frustration is quite possibly the first game to come to my mind when thinking about this game.

My main frustration is with the gameplay. The consists of 3 things. Races, performing tricks, and collecting orbs. First of all let's look at the races. The races come in two styles, you have 15 races against 5 other racers through the streets of the USA, UK and Japan, and you have 3 1vs1 races against you mentor in the hub. The ones against your mentor are very good fun and see you constantly pushing yourself to go that little bit faster. The races against 5 other racers though, are frustrating due to several things. One is the fact that the moment you go near the other competitors you will be sent flying. Another is that if you hit a wall once, or get knocked over at all, you have no chance at winning the race and are forced to restart the race. A third is that if you want to stay in first you have to find and take pretty much every short cut available. A fourth is that often right by the finish line your competitors will magically catch up with you and go flying straight in front of you for 1st place. Your frustration is only increased by the repetitive and annoying taunts your opponents jeer at you, and the lack of variety in the music selection, with the music that is there being repetitive and obnoxious.

There are an awful lot of tricks in this game, almost rivalling the trick selection of the 2 THPS games on the Dreamcast. However this does not matter due to several things. One is the lack of trick usage: there are only four trick events, and you're insane if you use the tricks whilst racing. The second is that the broken scoring system means that you will only ever use 2 or 3 tricks: this turns the trick events not into something fun or intense, but instead a constant grind of the same trick.

The orb events (of which there are 7) are actually rather good. These involve collecting orbs from places ranging from easy to hard to reach within a time limit.

Despite all the negatives there are quite a few good points to this game. The levels are VERY well designed and winning races feels VERY rewarding. Graphically this game is quite nice and free-roaming in the hub is good fun.

The game will last you 5-10 hours if you actually have the patience to complete it, and I can assure you that you won't be returning to it after that.

Gameplay = 3/10
Controls = 5/10
Sound = 2/10
Graphics = 9/10
Replayability = 2/10
Level/Character design = 9/10

Final Score = 4/10

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/16/07