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Cool Boarders 2 is currently the leading title in the Snowboarding genre in the U.S., partially because it’s a great game, and also because it’s the only snowboarding game available in the U.S. besides the original Cool Boarders. Its reign would surely end if Snowboarding Trix 98 were to be released in the U.S., although from what I heard it won’t be. This game does a good job of filling in the gaps that Cool Boarders 2 left, and even going beyond that.
GRAPHICS-The first thing I noticed about this game was its smoothness. I did not encounter any polygon breakup at all. The animation, especially of the character’s leaning did not appear to be missing any frames, unlike CB2 where upon pressing left or right on the d-pad, your character would snap to either side without going through realistic motions. Which really doesn’t matter that much, it just looks a lot nicer to have less or no frames missing. The graphics themselves are only marginally better then those of CB2, being that they are only cleaner and flow better.
GAMEPLAY-This is where the game really shines. The handling of the boarders is nice and tight, but not too tight. The L1 and R1 buttons on the shoulders are used to carve, (L1 to carve left and R1 to carve right), and also used to decide what trick you want to do, whether it’s a helicopter spin, front flip, back flip, or even what I guess you would call a side flip. Of course, these tricks won’t score you the big points alone. You need to add in a few grabs by pressing X and holding various directions on the d-pad to spice up those flips. For those of you who are used to the easy to execute tricks in cool boarders, you might be in for a surprise. These tricks are definitely harder the CB2’s tricks, but not to the point where they are impossible, it just takes a little practice.
SOUND- There is really not much to say about the sound. This game features no music, which is fine with me, but may prove to be a disappointment to your average gamer. Then there is your sound of the board carving through the snow, which sounds just like that, a board carving through the snow. And lastly, possibly one of the worst features of this game is one of those incredibly annoying announcer voices that can be found in almost all of these grungy, alternative, snowboarding, skateboarding, rollerblading types of games.
Whats the verdict? Yes, buy this game, even if you own CB2, I think you will enjoy this game to the max. It should set the new standard for snowboarding games (or even snow based racing games for that matter). You don’t need to know any Japanese to understand it because all of the menus are in English. The only thing in Japanese is the descriptions of each downhill course.
Graphics 8.5
+smooth and rich
+very clean
+no polygon breakup apparent
-really nice, but could be better
Gameplay 9
+tight handling
+tricks are at a prefect level of difficulty, being not to hard and not to easy
Sound 3
-annoying voice
-no music