Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild Review

Topless jet-skiing?

Over the past few winters, a trio of game companies figured that the best way

to beat the wintertime blues would be to get out of the rain and get under the

blazing, artificial sun of your TV screen while hitting the waves with an XTREME

jet ski game. It didn’t quite work out as planned, though, with one

game causing XTREME bouts of nausea and the other

floating along the current of XTREME mediocrity. The

last, however, surprised us all with better than average gameplay and a huge

trick list.

As

is usually the case, the two weaker games have seemingly dropped off the planet

and the good one has come back for another round of wild, environmentally-unfriendly

action. Developer Rainbow Studios has partnered up with THQ for Splashdown:

Rides Gone Wild, a new and improved ride that marks the “X” in Xtreme.

First, the basics. Rides Gone Wild offers several modes with

which to quench your watercraft thirst. The Training mode kicks the game off

with an opportunity to practice your trick skills and learn the ancient secrets

of jet-ski control. Then there’s Arcade mode, which gives you a variety of single-player

game choices, including Circuit (race), Freestyle (stunt), and Time Trial (speed)

options. There’s also a Versus mode that allows you to compete head to head

with a friend. Of course, most of your time will be spent in Career mode.

Career mode breaks down into the World (outdoor) and Stadium (indoor) championships. Both will have you choosing from a variety of racers, each with a different performance rating. You’ll also choose a difficulty level that will determine not only how hard your opponents will be, but how many races you will run.

Just like the original, Rides Gone Wild offers decent jet-ski

physics, with your craft responding to the water pretty realistically. Pulling

back on straightaways will give you a little extra boost and nosing under the

water a bit on turns will help keep you up to speed.

So what’s new? Plenty. For starters, the trick system has been improved. Besides

the huge list of wacky tricks, Rides Gone Wild allows you to

string together combos for an even more impressive trickfest. It’s still really

easy to pull them off, with the push of a modifier button and a flip of the

control stick, so you won’t need to get caught up in a zillion crazy moves to

do something cool. Not all moves can combo into each other, though, so if you

want to be really good, you’ll need to study the trick list.

The

courses have also gotten a tremendous face-lift. With a theme park motif, Rides

Gone Wild takes you through a land teeming with dinosaurs, a pirate’s cove and

even a flooded gold mine, among others. What’s even better is that the courses

are completely dynamic. Ships explode, obstacles will move and gates open up

to reveal new routes with every completed lap. And just like the previous game,

there are still plenty of hidden shortcuts to find. I haven’t seen racing maps

this good since SF Rush 2049.

Another fresh face for Rides Gone Wild is the Warehouse,

where you’ll be able to purchase a ton of unlockable gear with the points you

accumulate in the game. You’ll find a large helping of extra characters, suits,

watercraft, tracks and more. The only problem is that the majority of these

items can be unlocked as you progress naturally in the game without spending

any points. Even though there’s a boatload of stuff, it really won’t take too

long for you to unlock it all.

When things are up and running, Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild

is quite pretty. The graphics are smooth and the churning waves look right.

However, its performance suffers from aging hardware. The load times remind

me of trying to download movies on a 56k connection, and with the dynamic environment,

you’ll definitely be seeing some slowdown when the action starts to get more

intense.

But other than that, Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild has proven

itself to be an enjoyable substitute for H2O worshippers on those days when

you just can’t make it to the beach. High speed and high flying stunts through

creative locations beats watching the rocks grow any day of the week.