2 Xtreme

"This was a Good Game for its Time"

2xtreme is is just one of the games from the Xtreme series, and one of the first games on the Playstation console. It is an extreme sports game that places you on roller blades, mountain bikes, snowboards and skateboards. Although it is not the best, or not even a good game, it could be a good lesson to developers that want to make games like these and make sure they don't screw up. So, on with the review and we will see why this game does not deserve a better score then a six.

The opening video starts off with winter mountains and showing the various sports you will play in the game. Broken glass will add to the effects, and then you will see some sky, but that's about it. The intro is short, lasting less then twenty five seconds. Finally, it ends off showing the name of the game and then you go into the main menu. Once zoomed in and the letters are in place, the main menu gives you seven selections. At the very top, you will choose if you want a one player or two player game. Below that you can select your character, or you can even make your own character with the stats that you want. After that is what type of game you want to play, exhibition or a new season, which is like a career mode. Fourth in line is the difficulty selection. You can put it on rookie, veteran,pro, or extreme. Under the difficulty selection you can pick your course if you are just playing on exhibition. On season mode you can not pick a course, you will have to do the ones given to you. In options you can check records of the scores in the courses, check the standings if you are in a season, toggle fighting and computer competition on or off, pick your controls and adjust the sound and music volume. Finally, at the very bottom of the screen, there is Race, where you will go and race once your options are done. Whatever option you choose on the main menu, an effect will come in as if you are jumping into a bowl, and when you are off the lip, you will be on your next screen. Leave the menu running for a few seconds and a demo of level will be played.

The visuals in 2xtreme are nothing special to talk about. In the character selection screen, the many different players are in full three dimension and look pretty good. Unfortunately, during gameplay nearly every object on the screen is 2-D. Everything is flat. The players will move very little, and everything have very low animation movements. When I crash into something, and the object is in my way, the character will simply shift over, not making a simple movement, as if he is teleporting. There aren't really any pop-ups, and the backgrounds in levels such as the mountain in the snowboarding level can look pretty good. Too bad the scenery far away from you is not as important as the scenery around you. You will notice some nearby buildings, billboards, and cars in city levels. As where in the African stages you will see zebras, elephants, and small huts. So it is safe to say that there is quite a bit of detail in levels. But since this game was made in 1996, you can't really blame them since it was made in the very early days of the Playstation console. So all in all, I would say that the graphics are not horrible, but not good. One word to describe them would be decent.

The audio can be closely related to the visuals but can be described as a better. From the beginning, the music will be kind of rock music featuring guitars, bass, drums and what not. Not to say that it is hard rock or hard core punk. When you play, it will be pretty much the same kind of music, but not exactly the same song. For most of the levels, it is more or less the exact song played. The sound effects get a bit better. When you punch or kick, you will release a short burst of sound signifying you are putting power in it. When you hit a vase or something breakable, it will shatter. When you ride over a wooden bridge, you will hear the difference on riding on flat ground and on a wooden bridge. If you come in contact with something hard, you will hear a thud. You might hear this one guy's voice sometimes when you pass through a gate, so it's good there is some kind of voice in this game. Finally, there will be a crowd in the background clapping when you successfully do a trick and saying, ''oooooh'' when you fail a trick and fall to the ground.

Before a level starts, you will see a loading screen showing what level you are doing, a picture of what sport you are participating in, and the turning 2xtreme logo in the top left corner of your screen. When that is done, the camera will quickly zoom into the starting position, and you will quickly hear a ''Set, Go!'' I suggest holding the go button because you will have very little time to prepare once the loading screen is done. Unfortunately for you, you will always start off in the last row. On screen there will be a speed display, what place you are in, how much time is into the level, and a bar. If you have a power-up, it will be displayed at the bottom left of your screen and available for you to use whenever you want it. You can only have one power-up at a time. Once the race has begun, you will be racing against nine other opponents in a grueling race to the finish. I say grueling because you and your opponents will kick and punch you in order for you to fall down and fall behind. It would be wise for you to do it also as it is an advantage to stall your opponents, plus you get points for it at the end. At the end, a score table will come up showing what place you came in, the amount of time it took you to complete the course, and how many points you got from going under the point gates, tricks and knocking down other racers. Coming in first place is the most important

During each level, there will be two different types of gates you can go under. One is for power-ups such as speed, strength, health, and big air. The other type is for points. A different color will signify a different amount of points. A yellow one gives you the least(150), a red one gives you more(250), and the teal gate gives you the most(500). Simply pass under the narrow gate to collect the temporary power-ups or points, but beware, if you hit the sides you will fall down and lose precious time. There is actually one more type of gate, but it can help you or hurt you. Passing under a purple gate will trigger moving walls just ahead of you, and could stall many opponents, including you, so use it at your own risk.

There is a trick system in 2xtreme. When going off jumps, you will get air and in this time you can perform a trick, or even a combo of tricks. There are four tricks in all, and all of these are given to you in the instruction manual. Simple tricks will have you pushing only two buttons, but the hardest one will have you making a combo of four buttons. The better the trick, the more points you earn. Although not amazingly great, I can see a great potential for tricks in future games.

There are four courses in the game. Each course is for its own sport. Los Angeles is for skateboarding, Las Vegas is for roller blading, Africa is for mountain biking, and Japan is for snowboarding. Each course has three levels in it. The levels do not change much from each one. They just have different turns, different obstacles in different places and whatever. The levels take about four to five minutes to complete, so they are not too short. There will be moving obstacles in levels, such as dogs in Japan, and traffic in the American levels. Jumping over them would help to avoid them.

Although there seems to be a big and detailed list of different characters and their abilities, it is not that special. Each character has their own name, and attributes such as muscle, endurance, speed, reflexes, and tricks. Then they are graded on their vehicle skills, and then more into detail is each sport. You can also adjust them if you want to. It does look pretty cool, but in truth it probably doesn't make a big difference on who you pick. Most characters look exactly the same, other than the fact that they are wearing a different shirt and hat. There are no female characters.

There are some really absurd and unrealistic components to this game. In snowboarding, for example, you don't go downhill! You cruise on flat ground going at speeds of sixty miles per hour! It is possible to go up hills easily and go off ramps and get big air. It is hard to understand why the developers did not make the snowboarding levels go downhill like in real life.

It is easy to get into 2xtreme and its simple controls. the X button is to start off and accelerate, and after about thirty miles per hour or so you press the circle button to go into the crouch position to go even faster and keep the high speed. R2 and L2 is to put on your power-up. R1 is to punch to your right side, and L1 is to punch to your left side. Triangle is to slow down and put on your brakes, which people don't tend to use, and the square button is jump. There is no analog support. You will need a memory card in order for you to save your season progress and records.

As for value, 2xtreme does have two player, so you can compete against your buddies in levels and see who is better. If you are really into this game, you can try to beat the season on extreme difficulty, which proves to be a good challenge if you want to spend the time on it. You can customize and make characters, but that won't take up too much time and isn't necessarily fun.

For its time, it was an OK game. By today's standards, it will be considered bad because of its graphics and replay value. But since I always grade games on what it was when they first came out, I will not say this game is horrible.

Visuals : 5/10
Audio : 6/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Value : 6/10

FINAL SCORE: 6/10

It is not recommended to buy this game, I only own a copy because it came with my Playstation as a bundle, so it would be wrong for me to say this was a bad game, because it was my first game on the Playstation and I put a bit of time into this. So go ahead and try this if you can, but by now there will be many more games out there of the same genre that are getting much higher scores.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/04/02, Updated 09/04/02