TrickStyle

""It's Tricky!" for me to say anything positive about this game"

One of the first games available for the Dreamcast, I casually discarded Trickstyle as another gaming coaster, destined to be cluttering the bargain bins for years to come. But now that I've actually got a chance to sit down the play the thing, is Trickstyle the crap I imagined it to be, or was I wrong to judge it?

Graphics: 6/10

After negotiating a clunky front end, I come face to face with a cross between Daytona USA's cardboard box men, and a lump of Play Doh. Obviously, the character models like the sort of detail we've come to expect in next-generation titles. The lighting effects look pretty good, but these come at the cost of frame rates that break down more than a British Railway train. All of these factors make a game that look distinctly average, and not what you'd expect from the graphical monster that is Dreamcast. And to make matters worse, the screen flickers badly on a 50hz display. With no 60hz option, this becomes even worse.

Sound: 7/10

To Trickstyle's credit, the music isn't as bad as the rest of the game. I'm not a fan of the kind of hip-hop and beats that come with Trickstyle, but they fit the style of the game very well. It has an underground edge to it. Unfortunately, these are marred by the repetitive and annoying character voices. When your character crashes or messes up a trick (which believe me, is going to happen a lot) prepare yourself for some of the worst voice acting known to man. Some sound like your character is coughing or even being impaled on a skewer instead of colliding with the walls. Whether over or under acting, the voices are never good. Just be thankful you can drown out the voices with the music, or indeed with your own CDs.

Gameplay: 5/10

Trickstyle has one extremely big flaw- the controls are terrible. 'Unresponsive' doesn't suffice here- because whenever you've pressed the jump button, and a spin follows 5 seconds after you pressed it, the controls quickly go from unresponsive to inexcusable. This game is one that demands superhuman reflexes to progress in it, and it's almost pot luck as to whether the controls will actually work or not. Even if the controls worked, they'd still be painful- players must hold down the R trigger to move forward and use the four face buttons to jump and perform tricks. The game is in dire need of some kind of auto-kick feature- anyone who's played the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games will know what I'm talking about.

Luckily Trickstyle doesn't throw you headfirst into the game, featuring a training mode. But the game sticks a time limit onto even the most basic of training, and as a result the learning curve is practically vertical. What's the point in teaching someone how to play a game, when they are branded a loser within a few minutes of starting it? Instead of teaching you how to improve your skills, Trickstyle sets you difficult tasks and blames you for its shortcomings. Not a good start.

Once (if?) you overcome the training mode, you're into the game proper and the real fun begins. Yes, that was sarcasm. Trickstyle confirms my worst fears here- that yes, this game is totally crap. All of its problems I've hinted at in the training mode become much more apparent here, and the difficulty level never lets up. Trickstyle is hard. Too hard. The races are against computer opponents clearly not wrestling with the same dire controls as yourself- they know every last shortcut, and the ideal racing lines. I like to define bad AI as when you know that it's just a computer. Trickstyle's opponents aren't even computers- they're just polygon models following the same line around every day. If you bash them out of their rhythm, they'll find their way again soon enough. After all, it's the only way they know.

Grinding along rails in Trickstyle is stupidly hard, due to the aforementioned collision detection. Countless times you'll think you have landed on a rail, only to go sailing off into the distance, and vice versa. You might lose time at best, but more often than not you'll lose the race. In a game that demands perfection, giving you such dire controls to work with is the worst thing possible. Crazy Taxi demands perfection too- but in it, the controls are perfect. If you do something wrong, it's your fault. You might feel the same way in Trickstyle- but I assure you, it's the game, not you. As my brother put it 'It would be better if you could grind along rails like in Tony Hawk.' He's only 9, but he already knows more than the developers of Trickstyle. As an alternative to Trickstyle, why not try Tony Hawk? It's more entertaining, bigger, looks better, and it's everything you could hope for in a game. Everything Trickstyle isn't. For a game that puts so much emphasis on tricks, it would make sense to make this part of the game decent.

If you ever make it to one of Trickstyle's three bosses, things still don't get any better. This game insists on destroying my mentality at every stage- if I come second, I'm not second, I'm a loser. It's the most politically incorrect racing game I've played in quite some time. The character designs reflect this- Russians, Japanese, Americans- noone is safe from Criterions stereotypes. But to concentrate on tiny flaws like this would be silly, when there are so many big ones to cover.

As well as the main races, your instructor offers you some challenges in order to unlock new tricks. It's a good idea, poorly executed- echoing the main theme of Trickstyle. These aren't worth going into any detail about, because you know what I'm going to say- they are crap.

For a summary of Trickstyle, I talked to my 9 year old brother again. ''If you had to sum up Trickstyle in one word, what would it be?'' Baring in mind this is the brother who plays San Francisco Rush 2049 all day, he said ''Crap.'' And I couldn't have put it better myself. Trickstyle is a collection of semi-decent ideas in a god-awful game that doesn't deserve a single microsecond of your attention.

Lastability 5/10

There are plenty of tracks to play your way through- all equally dull. This game begins to grate very quickly, not helped by its brutal difficulty level. I really feel sorry for anyone who got this game with their Dreamcast at Christmas.

Overall

Trickstyle is below average in every single respect. It would be a waste of money if it was given away for free. It's impossible to look at Trickstyle's positive aspects- because the negative ones are in abundance. The training mode in Trickstyle lowered the game by a full 10%, speaking volumes for the overall bad quality of it. Just say no to Trickstyle.

50%

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/03, Updated 05/29/03