989
Studios is real hit-and-miss these days.
Syphon Filter was fantastic, MLB 2000 is
high on the charts, but 3Xtreme, well,
it's more of a bomb than da bomb, if you
catch my drift. With this being the third
in the series, one would make the
assumption that the third would be the
charm. Or at least damn good. But 3Xtreme
is everything that Kelly Flock said was
wrong with EA in Next Generation magazine
last year: it lacks innovation, fun, and
the ability to convince any gamer that
it's better than its previous iterations.
This
sounds harsh, but one expects great
things from 989 Studios, a company that
brings us the exceptional Gameday year in
and year out, and has the potential to be
the Rare of the PlayStation world, or
bigger. But with 3Xtreme, it's apparent
that another game has been cranked out on
late night pizza and Pepsi with little
aim, passion, or focus. Numbers not
gamers were mind with this stinker.
- Gameplay
-
When ESPN Extreme games hit retail
shelves in 1996, our former editor Adam
Douglas wasn't thrilled with the game but
saw its potential, as can be seen in his
review. Back then, the concept of three
radical sports meshed into one monster
game was cutting edge. Now, three years
later, it's status quo. In fact, if there
isn't something especially unique about a
game nowadays on PS, it'll be lost among
the onslaught of other choices.
3Xtreme
begs to be played with the brutality of
Road Rash, and screams to be radical,
hard-core, cutting edge, like any number
of snowboarding games. The intro movie
for the game demonstrates these aspects
beautifully. Too bad the game is anything
but. Instead what we get is a game by the
numbers, with everything that seems
right, but isn't. It's as if the
developers ignored all of the little
details. What happened to 22 characters
on screen at once? Now we get six, and
the frame rate isn't necessarily running
in the high 20s. What happened to the
street luge? OK, so maybe it wasn't that
fun in the first place, but why wasn't it
substituted with something cooler, such
as a goofy flying bicycle, a lie-down
bicycle, or something funny or absurd?
Last, in the first game there was
cross-town traffic, and characters could
jump off the roofs of moving cars! How
cool was that? Now we don't even get
moving vehicles at all. It's as if all of
the potentially cool aspects of the game
have been whittled down to zip, nada,
zero.
With a set
number of moves per character, some of
which are shared between characters, the
radical qualities can be summed up before
checking into the pro level of the season
mode. Flips, rails slides, 360s, tail
grabs, etc. are all there, but if you
look in the manual, there aren't even
listed by their proper names. When you
buy a snowboarding game, you know that
the developers understand the moves and
know their names. In this manual, they're
simply listed as trick 1, trick 2, trick
+ so-and-so. What gives?
OK, but to
be completely fair, the moves as the best
part of this game. Ramps litter the
courses, and specially designed jumps
lead into triple or quadruple gates,
rails and even triple jump areas. In some
cases, wildly steep jumps enable complete
freedom to pull off 360s that lead into
flips, tail grabs and more, depending on
how good you are. The moves are easy to
pull off, too. Hit the triangle or circle
and a direction, or those plus R2 or L2
in combination for other moves.
Everything is listed in the manual and
they're a cinch to pick up.
While the
tricks are pumped up in 3Xtreme, the
fighting is pared down. Fights don't play
much of a part in the game anymore. And
if you though this uses the analog
controller, think again. It's lop-sided,
too. Players have to slam an opponent at
least three times before knocking them
out, but in the later levels, rivals will
zoom up and with one pop you're taken you
out. They'll zoom up from behind you (and
from beyond the screen) and whack you
good. So, the AI is weird, at best.
This point
can be even furthered if you notice how
they play against one another. Yes, they
do fight one another, and that's cool.
But they also do really lame stupid
stuff. For instance, you'll be ripping
down the course and see an opponent who's
slammed into a wall - not a rail or a
narrow doorway, a wall. In the next
second, they'll tear by you so fast
you'll wonder where the little motors on
their skateboards are.
The big
hit of this game is two-player mode,
because once you've played through the
champion circuits, time trial,
exhibition, and freestyle are weak little
modes that won't warrant your attention.
I apparently misunderstood Freestyle,
thinking I could jam around without a
time limit and practice moves in
specially designed areas. Ha ha! Instead
I found that I was plunked into a timed
course in which I couldn't reach the end
even if I was fast, made all of my
landings, and was a master of disaster.
Freestyle? More like Freepile.
- Graphics
-
Graphically, 3Xtreme is not a
next-generation product, by any means.
The characters and backgrounds are
completely polygonal, which nicely
accentuate a 3D world, and the courses
are decorated well and designed
particularly well for this kind of
high-speed, trick oriented racing. In
some cases, one can see the courses
designed to avoid pop-in. Strangely, in
some other courses, or parts of courses,
pop-in whacks you over the head. Still,
even Sports Car GT (a bad looking game)
looks better than this. How come Gameday,
Syphon Filter, Rally Cross, and MLB 2000
look so frickin' cool, while 3Xtreme
looks like a smeared, pixely disaster,
with bad frame rates and sharply jointed
characters?
It's safe
to say that while 3Xtreme looks better
than any of its predecessors, it still
looks like merde. In 1997 this might have
made the grade, but not in PlayStation's
fourth year. With a complete set of poor
full-motion video making up the
characters' moves, one is reminded of the
Mortal Kombat rip-offs that made Mortal
Kombat's FMV look good. Ouch. True, the
characters are highly textured and
skillfully designed, but they move so
unrealistically, stutters and all, which
players will lose sight of those little
points.
Another
note that should just tickle gamers is
that Slim Jim is a sponsor of sorts. The
ads are splashed all over the damned
courses in a not-so subtle cross
promotion, and apparently even that wild
wacky guy "Slim" is hidden as a
playable character.
- Sound -
What can be said here? The music is all
over the board. Ranging from grunge and
hard rock, the game also lists tunes that
mix house and techno styles. Ultraspank
pulls off a nice intro song that appears
on their debut. But other than that,
there are no big name bands listed here.
The music is fast-paced and edgy,
perfectly suited for what 3Xtreme aspires
to be.
Sound
effects are a different thing altogether.
Even Cro-Magnon had a wider range of
grunts and yells. Every guy yells
"Ughhh!" and the women
characters share the equivalent moans.
It's not a pretty set of sounds, pilgrim.
- Comments
-
This Game Really Bite's.Don't waste your
money!
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