Today I'll be looking at Trickstyle for the Dreamcast, and Airblade for the PS2 which are both hoverboard games developed by Critereon games. In much the same way as Metropolis Street Racer and Project Gotham Racing (developed by Bizzare Creations), it seems that rather than wasting their game engine with the short lived Dreamcast games, the developer decided to rename the concept and release it as a different title on a new console.
Console: Sega Dreamcast
Developer: Critereon Games
Release Date: 31st August 1999
A launch game for the Dreamcast in both Europe and North America, Trickstyle represented a time in
console history when perhaps for the first time games developers could realise their most far out concepts, in 3d without sacrificing too much graphically or in terms of gameplay. A mix of the environments from Wipeout, and the boarding from 1080° Snowboarding combined with hoverboards and some internationally based tracks to race on might have been too much for any of the preceding consoles to handle.
Gameplay revolves around races taking place in the UK, USA and finally Japan with 5 races in each area and a final boss race to unlock a new type of board for use. There are also challenges which unlock different tricks for the player to use in-game, and act as a tutorial of sorts for how to use some features of the game during races.
Races feature 6 competitors of the 9 who are available to choose from, and although they all have their own racer types, stats and backstory its fairly unimportant who you're racing against. The courses themselves have 3 checkpoints, the first 2 give the players a time bonus to the ticking race clock and the last as a finish line. It's quite difficult to move through the level slow enough to be timed out, and as there's other racers on the track, having the timer seems somewhat redundant.
As for the difficulty of the races, there's a rather odd case of rubberbanding in Trickstyle; no matter how fast you progress through the race, there's always likely to be someone right behind ready to overtake, however the easiest victories seem to come from crashing early on in the race, and catching up to the other competitors as you cross the finish line, stealing a victory. In this way, winning a race can sometimes feel less of an achievement than it should.
Although sometimes the turning mechanic can feel a little loose at times, the game's controls generally work well. There's a good sense of speed coupled with the tricks and racing and apart from a slightly iffy luge rail mechanic there's not a lot to complain about at all. You're able to smash through the clockface of Big Ben on some of the UK tracks and there are other exciting environment features which add to the gameplay.
Graphically the game's backgrounds and racers are both fairly impressive, they look smooth and futuristic to fit the theme of the game, and are a big improvement on the previous generation's graphics and still hold up to this day pretty well. There are some spots in the game where you can briefly see through walls or under the floor but these don't generally ruin the visuals too much. The game's soundtrack features a great deal of ambient instrumental electronic music which fits the theme of the game pretty well and adds to the tension at points.
Overall the result is a hoverboard racing game which controls well mostly and is fun to play but can be ruined a little by the AI's excessive rubberbanding and almost random race results due to this. Graphically impressive for its time and with a decent soundtrack as well, the game features a good selection of tracks and locations with generally well thought out track design and gameplay features as well as an interesing selection of racers and challenges in one player mode. The system for doing tricks could be improved so that they're not as laborious but the good sense of speed and competition from the game helps to make this less of an issue.
Rating: 65/100
Grade: C
Game: Airblade
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Critereon Games
Release Date: 28th January 2002
If you were to mix the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series with the concept and handling of Trickstyle, chances are that you'd get something fairly similar to Airblade. Instead of races, there's levels with a series of challenges to complete and cutscenes featuring the storyline of the game inbetween them. The challenges featured in levels are linear and although some can be completed out of sequence, failing any of them causes the level to reset and all challenges must be completed again to pass.
The story begins with a "GCP" raid in search of the Airblade, a hoverboard in the possession of a former GCP employee. Having managed to distract the raiders, the default player character Ethan manages to escape on the hoverboard and consequently must follow instructions to rescue Oscar, a former GCP employee who managed to take possession of the Airblade. Overall the story only serves to give the player a reason to do the tasks inside the levels, but its not terrible.
There are 6 levels in all to Airblade, which is pretty poor when compared to Tony Hawk's games of the time and even earlier releases. The level objectives are also less numerous and you're not allowed to complete them at your own pace, or in the order you'd like to. In some ways the freedom of the Tony Hawk's series is one of its strong points. Airblade is very linear and although its fun when you succeed, sometimes it can be difficult to complete the challenges within time or even at all in the later stages of the game.
The controls feel similar to Trickstyle in terms of movement, but there's more control in general and the tricks have been completely revamped for a different overall feel. With the basic controls there's turning of the board, boosting and brakes. There's a fairly small amount of tricks and grinds featured in the games, but missions usually require just a simple grind or getting to places inside of the level rather than specific tricks in those places. With an arrow to direct you toward objectives, they're never hard to find but as the stages progress they become increasingly challenging to reach.
The game looks pretty nice graphically, slightly moreso than Trickstyle I'd say although the environments aren't as interesting. The character models are slightly better and look more human. There's not such a great sense of speed as in Trickstyle although its almost there when boosting. Musically the game suffers a little from its soundtrack which features almost out of place rap/rock fusions and rocky elevator music amongst other things.
Although it features more story and gameplay features than Trickstyle as well as objectives and a better tricks engine, Airblade still feels somewhat empty and very linear as if there's no exploration or fun to be had outside of the predefined challenges. At least with Trickstyle you're able to find shortcuts and secrets in the admittedly linear tracks.
Ultimately Airblade has some interesting features and there's fun to be had from the first few levels if not the whole game due to its difficulty. If you've played the Tony Hawk's series, you're likely to miss being able to take challenges at your own pace and individually, although the directional arrow pointing to level objectives is a nice touch not found in the Tony Hawk's series. Other than this though it seems like a cheap imitation of the concept and although the hoverboards are fun, taking on the Tony Hawk's series is an ill advised move.
Rating: 60/100
Grade: D
Overall I feel Trickstyle is the better game despite not having too much of a story or as good of a trick system as Airblade. What Trickstyle does have however is a better difficulty curve, more races and challenges to make for a longer game overall, more characters to play as, and more excitement whilst playing the game. Airblade doesn't do badly for what it is, it'd be hard to make a challenge based sports game with any kind of board better than the Tony Hawk's series and in the end its unoriginality lets it down.
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