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Dom Robinson reviews
Sony
- Price: £39.99
- Players: 1-2
- Widescreen: No
- DTS sound: No
- 60Hz: No
Many arcade fans will be familiar with the Alpine Racerseries, this being the third game and which you get to choose from eight charactersincluding an unknown one to be unlocked later.
There’s a bog-standard “Cross Race”, which sees you and three CPU opponentsgoing for the finish and a slalom that’s just for one, plus an “Extreme Winners Cup”,in which you start small with no money and basic skis, then move on by spendingyour winnings to bigger and better equipment, including snowboards. Don’tspend all your money though, since when you need to re-run a face throughfailing the first time, it’ll cost several thousand dollars to go another time.
Graphically it’s a reasonable game, giving you what you’d expect from thearcade but you find that it’s a road we’ve travelled all too often andone that gets very repetitive after a while. The sound is similarlyunpredictable and will garner no surprises.
And then on to the gameplay, which is what will determine how much you stickwith this release, but this is where things begin to go downhill (ahem), asapart from steering left and right, you feel like you have little control overyour character.
It’s annoying the way the third-person camera cuts to a side aerial shotwatching you in the air only, as you go over a steep jump, since it adds nothingto the experience and just detracts from the enjoyment and breaks yourconcentration as you’re thinking about landing and would rather see the coursein front of you.
In fact, the way the camera follows you is also rather poor at times, asyou leap over a jump and the camera angle looks down on you too much, ratherthan looking forward to the course in front, thus limiting your visibility.
It’s also annoying when bumping into part of the scenery and finding youcan’t get straight up again, instead bouncing off other things like the ballin a pinball machine, before getting back to normal, thus wasting valuable time.
And another moan – why is it in games like this where, if you collide with another characteron the course, it’s always you who ends up worse off while they speed along?
I could say that this simply hasn’t got the longevity of SSX Trickyand some would say that’s to miss the point because it’s an arcade game, butat least in the arcade you got a proper cabinet to shimmy left and right toand, for me, a lack of longevity brings about boredom.
SOUND EFFECTS AND MUSIC
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OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.