""Not Good, Pretty Bad, You Can Do Better""

Rippin’ Riders has totally destroyed my interest in the snowboarding genre. I’ve played snowboarding games from time to time, but this is the first time that I bought one and it will be the last time.

Gameplay: 2/10
When I bought this game I didn’t have an instruction manual so I had to figure out the controls for myself. I figured them out eventually, and I also figured out they were horrible. It was really hard to control the character at first, I kind of got use to it, but it still wasn’t too good. Another thing I don’t like is the way you jump. You have to hold the “A” button to charge up, and while you are charging up you cant turn right or left. So it makes it very hard to line up correctly and to jump. After playing for a while I still wasn’t able to figure out the trick system. I was able to do a single trick and sometimes do a flip during the trick, but I wasn’t able to do it consistently. You also don’t get to race against the computer, instead you race against the clock. Racing the clock is alright at first, but pretty soon its gets boring. One reason it gets boring is because its hard. Usually I like a challenge but this time, I can’t even control my person well enough to come close to beating it. Also racing against the clock is harder then racing against the AI players because you have to race it perfect and you can’t rely on the AI to make a mistake.

Graphics: 9/10
The graphics in this game are absolutely amazing. The levels and the characters both look very well done. There are a lot of details everywhere and a lot of nice animations. Some of the animations are like when your turning, your character would lean to the side you were turning, and I thought that was pretty cool. The snow also looks very good and powdery. There also isn’t much slowdown in the framerate. The game usually runs pretty smooth but when it doesn’t you can really notice the slowdown.

Sound: 5/10
The soundtrack is pretty good. There are 9 tracks and each is pretty good. The character you pick chooses the track you get. So if you pick a character and like its track then that’s good, but if you have character you like but you don’t like the music then that’s not too good. So there are problems like that and it would have been better if you could just pick the song you wanted. The reason I gave sound such a low score was because of the commentator guy. He would say the same lines over and over. If I do a simple trick (its too hard to do a big trick) he would say stuff like this, “Good, not bad, but you can do better then this.” But I’m not sure if he’s talking about the game or my playing abilities?

Replay Value: 2/10
The game gets really boring fast, because it is very difficult to do tricks and to control your player. The singleplayer is sub-par and very repetitive. Multiplayer is not much better. Multiplayer you race against your friends and try to get points but its not that much fun.

Rent or Buy: None
I suggest you totally stay away from this game. There is not much to offer in this, but if you really want to get it, I suggest you rent it first. Only buy it, if you know for sure you will like it.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/01/03, Updated 07/01/03