Trickstyle

Product description Disc(s) only. Ships in generic case. Disc(s) are professoinally cleaned. Guaranteed functional or replacement. Amazon.com TrickStyle is one of the most stylishly pleasing games. And the Dreamcast version really pumps out the pixels with fluid animation that effortlessly follows the hoverboard riders along the tracks. One of the game's designers recently explained that the concept behind the game was for riders to find the path of least resistance, taking one graceful path down the track like "a drop of mercury." Great concept. But this drop met many a brick wall on its way to uncertain victory. The tracks in TrickStyle are not player-friendly, and neither are the computer-controlled opponents that act more like flawless robots than flesh-and-blood competitors. Still, this game looks so darn cool, you can't resist playing it. The requisite tricks from snowboarding games are here, but this time they actually add important power-ups to your repertoire, favoring function over, dare we say, style. To save yourself the frustration of trying to consistently win races, you should enjoy this game by watching the screen while other more nimble or less leisure-time-deficient friends play. --Jeff Young Pros: Jaw-dropping graphics and animation Functional board tricks Contemporary styling Cons: Difficult racetracks Unrealistically skilled computer opponents Need to place first in order to progress Review "Excuse me little girl, I have to borrow your... hoverboard?" The famous scene from Back to the Future II may have inspired the realization that someday you won't need wheels or snow to hop on your board and perform some radical stunts. Well, that day has come with the arrival of TrickStyle - a futuristic racing game that lets you stand atop a floating board with a thruster on the back. But while the premise and physics are a little refreshing, TrickStyle doesn't do a whole lot of revolutionizing and ultimately ends up being a disappointment. Instead of bogging you down with menus, TrickStyle simply has you choose a racer and a board, and then puts you into a main staging area called the Velodrome. From there, you enter into different rooms to select the challenge you're going to tackle next. The game is divided into two different tasks - challenging the Velodrome trainer to unlock new tricks, and racing the tracks to unlock new areas and boards. The challenges usually have you run through a series of gates in the Velodrome before a timer expires. Once you're done, you can opt to move to the next race or return to the dome for some practice. After the third challenge, you'll be sick of the limited space inside the Velodrome and wish you simply had a menu. The racing tracks are spread across three different continents - Japan, the USA, and the UK. Once you have raced the five races on each continent, you'll unlock a boss race, which usually isn't a race at all, but a Velodrome-like challenge. Beating these will unlock new hoverboards for you to race with. Unfortunately, the racing tracks are really tightly spaced, making collisions with other racers almost inevitable. And since the outcome of collisions are determined by one stat - strength - I found that racing with any but the three bully racers was almost impossible, since the computer-controlled characters would repeatedly knock into you and cause you to wipe out. Apparently, the developers couldn't be bothered to come up with any sort of creative name for any of the tracks, as they're simply designated by a number. And while the track design is creative, there are few tracks to choose from. The game boasts a total of 18 tracks, and more than four of them are tracks you've already seen before backward. TrickStyle has everything you would expect from a boarding game - rails, ramps, loops, impossible jumps, 1080-degree spins - it's all here. Unfortunately, for a game with the word "trick" in its title, the tricks in this game aren't really that eyebr