Rippin' Riders

[lastcallgames]

I've decided to appease the winter overlords (seriously, 5 inches, IN LATE MARCH? PEOPLE ARE ON SPRING BREAK YOU KNOW!) by giving them an offering, an offering of reviewing a game all about snow.

A totally mediocre at best game about snow. Rippin' Riders came about just before the influence of the Tony Hawk games completely changed the extreme sports sub genre. After THPS, there were clones everywhere, Razor Scooter, Dave Mirra, even a bunch of games from Activision themselves. But Rippin' Riders doesn't follow too closely. It tries to be different.

Graphically, this game is amazing. The courses are huge, but pretty well detailed for a Dreamcast game, and the effects your snowboard causes are a cool touch. All this quality comes at a cost, as the game takes FOREVER to load. It's not quite like a Neo Geo CD game, or Sonic 06, but those aren't compliments. Still, there is a ton of detail and pretty high res textures throughout the stages.

The audio is pretty good non-licensed music. Not great, but not terrible. The tracks are either long or loop perfectly so it's not noticeable. The effects are passable, as are the boarders' voices. The announcer is annoying to be honest, like a lot of pre-THPS extreme sports announcers (Wave Race 64 comes to mind).

The controls are, at best, passable. Pulling off tricks is needlessly difficult, and seemingly only possible at certain "trick areas", which wouldn't be an issue, if it weren't for the fact that unlocking stages requires a seemingly obscene score. Maybe I just suck (I did finish last at the contest for this game). In fact, in order to unlock the stage for the competition in this game, I needed to use a Gameshark, which I usually just use as a boot disc for Japanese titles.

In all, Rippin' Riders is middling at best. The game looks good, and the sound is alright, but the controls and steep difficulty bring it down. I give it a 5/10, right in the middle.

[Jaynubz]

I think you pretty much nailed the game in your review. Honest and with plenty of pros and cons with the game. Nice job!