Nov. 11th, 2002

GW Nintendo > Nintendo Reviews > Review Page

Infogrames and Paradigm brush off a year-old PS2 game to try and catch some big air. Will you want to be downwind?

There have been many successful takes on off-road motocross racing that have each uniquely found a way to offer an enjoyable experience. In recent years, Microsoft’s Motocross Madness series on the PC, Nintendo’s Excitebike 64 for the Nintendo 64, and EA Big’s multiplatform Freekstyle each have their own style and feel that paints the sport in a different light and makes the experience a great deal of fun. Unfortunately, Big Air Freestyle is largely uninspired, and while technically sound and solid in concept and design, the execution lacks any kind of originality or notable features.

Big Air Freestyle is actually a polished-up port of a PlayStation 2 game by the name of MXrider, released about a year ago. The game wasn’t the most spectacular hit at the time though, and one wonders why Infogrames felt the need to bring it out once again so long after the initial release. As for MXrider, the game at least had the FIM license (Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme), which is absent in Big Air Freestyle… Well OK, there probably aren’t many people who will care that it’s gone, but being that Big Air Freestyle mostly aims is in the “Sim” direction, the loss of a license does detract from the authenticity.

The gameplay in Big Air Freestyle is divided into Freestyle, Challenge and Race modes. The Freestyle mode has you performing tricks for point scores and the Challenge mode has you completing specific goals (like performing a specific stunt in thirty seconds) to open up new riders. The main part of the game though, is the Race mode, in which you succeed on various race courses to gain access to… more race courses.

The game features indoor and outdoor areas, and the main premise behind the gameplay is somewhat similar to that in the EA Sports Big games, like SSX and Freekstyle. Throughout the game, performing tricks adds to a boost meter give you an extra shot of speed when you need it. Unfortunately, the boost isn’t particularly effective, and it’s usually easier to win a race just by maneuvering your bike properly, learning how to brake using your front and rear wheels. It ain’t rocket science, either. One button is like a normal brake and the other allows you to make sharp turns... like a power slide only with no power and not much sliding. All said and done, the gameplay ends up becoming rather simple.

Earlier I said the game seems “mostly” intended to be a sim. The environments and riders seem realistically-designed enough, and the racing does seem to try for a “sim” kind of feel, but often character movement and animation seem somewhat unrealistic and the stunts often look absolutely ridiculous. A character will be riding straight ahead through a jump one moment, only to spin 360 degrees on its side and stop perfectly upright in midair the next. Any attention to realism the developer had been paying to the game obviously stopped before trick design.

The rest of the game’s visual aspects seem like just as much of a strange split between good attention to detail and a blatant lack of attention. The areas you race in look good, albeit somewhat bland, but some effects like water and mud are even a bit impressive, but everything is extremely repetitive. The game does offer a good sense of speed. Aside from weather conditions and a different picture for a background, you’ll often have a hard time telling the difference between one track and another.

Same problem with the riders and bikes: They look good enough, and even slowly get covered in mud. But the fact that every single rider looks exactly like the next (albeit with a palette swap), adds to the lack of variety in the courses to make just about everything in the game reflect this bland, repetitive theme. If that’s not bad enough, the game features a minimalist presentation, with menus full of text and not a whole lot else that take far too long to navigate, and the requisite loading screen every few minutes.

The audio is equally uninspired, featuring a lackluster soundtrack, hushed audience applause and one solitary motorbike noise blaring over the both of them. Add in a slush noise when your bike sloshes through mud, a slight “Whump” and an “Oof” whenever your biker crashes and that’s pretty much all there is to note in the sound department. No fanfare when you win a race, no speech from the riders and no announcer commenting on the competition.

When it comes down to it, Big Air Freestyle doesn’t seem to have any areas where it particularly excels, it doesn’t do anything original and it doesn’t even seem to have any enthusiasm for what it does do. Paradigm seemed to pack more excitement into their opening logo than into anything else in the game. And if it doesn’t seem like the developer was particularly enthusiastic about their own game, why should we be?

Jake McNeill
Tsk tsk… This coming from the folks that developed Pilotwings 64, Beetle Adventure Racing and the excellent Spy Hunter remake.

Big Air Freestyle: The Scores

Graphics Sound Gameplay Depth Presentation Overall 7.0 5.0 6.0 6.0 4.0 6.0

The Final Word:  Uninspired, unoriginal, repetitive and simple. A perhaps otherwise decent game made boring by a complete lack of personality and a poor presentation. The GameCube already has two better motocross games in Freekstyle and MX Superfly, and if you’re reading this, you probably have a computer capable of playing one of the Motocross Madness games. My advice to you is to take the $50 you would have spent on Big Air Freestyle and invest it into one of those. gamerweb reviews policy