Rushed PS2 Crap (Arctic Thunder (PS2))

Member Name: Guile176

Product:	Arctic Thunder (PS2)
Date:	07/04/03 (72 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cool courses

Disadvantages: Everything else

I've been a huge fan of Midway's Thunder series since the first
title in it called Hydro Thunder. That game was and still is one of
my all time favorite racing games on Dreamcast or any other system.
Next up came Hydro's follow up called 4 Wheel Thunder. The sequel
ditched the whole water and boat theme and replaced it with off road
action. While not quite as good as Hydro Thunder it was still a
great piece of software despite its insane difficulty. Next up is
the newest title in the Thunder series which im reviewing called
Arctic Thunder. When I first heard about this game awhile back I was
really happy. The Thunder series with snowmobiles. That just sounded
so cool. I haven't really played many snowmobile games either so
this got me into wanting it even more.

Ok so what's the Thunder series about you ask? It's all about wild
high speed arcade style racing on insane tracks. Im happy to say
Arctic Thunder retains all that feel perfectly and adds a few things
of its own such as a new boost system and weapons as i'll explain.

First up you get your choice out of 19 different characters to
choose from each on their own sled. They all have different specs in
speed, acceleration and handling. However despite there being 19
different characters they all feel the same exact thing. Character
design ranges from lame to pretty cool. You get a large variety of
character types including a secret agent, a cop, a biker type and a
stupid monkey.

Like I mentioned earlier there is now a new boost system in place.
Before in previo
us Thunder games you would pick up boost icon
scattered around the track. The boost could then be stored and used
at will any time you wanted. Now when you hit a boost icon it kicks
in immediately and last for a few seconds. I personally preferred
the old way better but this isn't too bad.

Now for the weapons. Each sled can now be equipped with a variety of
different weapons. These range from standard missiles with limited
tracking called Atomic Snowballs, to mines and grappling hooks. The
weapon system is rather poorly done. There is no way of actually
selecting which weapon you want to use except in the 2 player battle
mode. This is very awkward and often screws you up alot. Say there's
an opponent in front of you and you want to hit them with a missile,
but you just picked up some mines. What do you do? Simple, drop out
all your mines and by that time the guy or girl in front of you is
long out of your sites. See what a mess it is? Didn't Midway or the
development team Inland realize this during testing? I guess not.

There's also a trick system in place here too. Unfortunately, it's
very poorly done. You have no control over them whatsoever. Simply
hit a pick up icon while jumping a ramp, and that's all there is to
it. Your character will then do a random trick, and as a bonus a few
power up icons are dropped out ahead on the track.

Now onto the tracks. The tracks in the Thunder games have always
been spectacular and loaded with detail and little extras. Arctic
Thunder is no exception. The courses are set in a variety of
loc
ations around the world in places like Washington DC, The Great
Wall of China Russia and the Alaskan Pipeline. All the tracks are
open ended and have tons going on in them. For instance in Russia
you'll see a submarine surfacing in the middle of the track or in
Washington you'll end up driving your sled through the middle of the
White House. Really cool stuff here. Midway without a doubt knows
how to design some really great courses.


Game Modes


Arcade: Arcade mode is just how the name says. You play it just like
the arcade game. Choose your character then a course and your good
to go. When the race is over so is the game.

Points: In Points mode, you start out by choosing your character and
then a course. Each character has a variety of stats in not only
speed, acceleration and handling but in several other areas as well
such as shield strength and aim. Every character in this mode begins
with a minimum in all areas in this mode. During the race, you'll
earn yourself point in different ways such as hitting your opponent
with attacks, picking up icons and on your finish. With these
points, you can go to an upgrade shop and use them to power up all
the various attributes on your character and their sled.
Unfortunately, no matter how much you power your character or sled
up you never feel any kind of difference with them. This is pretty
lame. You can also use them to unlock new courses and characters.

Race: Race is pretty much like the Points mode, except you don't
earn any points at all. Instead finishing first, will earn y
ou
medals. Medals can unlock different things in the game including a
secret character.

Training: Training is just a solo run on the track of your choice
with any character. A good way to learn where the shortcuts and
hidden items are.

Battle: Battle is pretty much your Twisted Metal wannabe mode. It
can only be played with 2 players and is fairly decent. The courses
here are different from the ones in the regular mode and are more or
less arena type deals.




<b>Graphics 3:</b> What the frig is this? Why is this game so damn choppy?
Is this really the PS2? Sure doesn't look anything like what a PS2
game should. The frame rate is so poor, at times its a joke. The
games high point is around 24 frames per second but struggles to
even keep that. Watch in amazement when a few other riders or
something big happens in the background and see how the frame rate
dips down to an astonishing 10-15 fps. This is really insulting and
hurts the game a great deal. The action so choppy most of the time,
you swear you can count the frames on your hand. And I swear in the
2 player split screen modes you can. With a frame rate this poor, it
really hurts the gameplay badly. Half the time you can't even tell
what the heck is going on. And you got to see the Rooster Tail power
up. Watch in amazement as you see its 2 frames of animation.

The games environments despite having tons of little details remain
fairly simple in the way of polygon count. Rocks and building have a
pretty blocky look to them. Character models are ok but
they animate
pretty jerky so there's nothing great there.
The collision is very poor as well. You'll find yourself driving
strait through trees, cars and various other objects as well.
There's also a little pop up in the backgrounds as well. Nothing
major but throw it in with all the other graphical flaws and you've
got 1 crappy looking game.

There's no excuse for this game to look this bad. This game should
be up and running at a solid 60 frames per second. Man i'd be happy
if the frame rate was at least a constant 30. Im sure the system
could handle it. Heck 4 Wheel Thunder on the Dreamcast did it
perfectly and looked far better then this. Even Hydro Thunder which
was a DC launch title blows this game away graphically. Sure the
frame rate stuttered abit on some tracks (mainly the Egypt) but the
game overall remained highly playable and looked great. Why can't
the PS2 handle this game at least as good as the DC handled Hydro
Thunder? Both are roughly on the same graphic level. Only difference
was that Hydro Thunder had a playable frame rate. I thought the PS2
was supposed to be far more powerful hardware then the DC? It's a
shame 95% of the PS2's developers have no clue how to program on it.



<b>Sound 7:</b> Well at least the sounds decent. Music is pretty cool. Its
mostly some generic rock sounds with a few familiar sounding numbers
here and there. Sound effect wise things are pretty decent. Nothing
spectacular but nothing too bad. The character voices are pretty
lame though. They would have been best le
ft out. Their muffled
sounding and stupid.


<b>Control 5:</b> Control would have been great if it weren't for the
horrid frame rate and lack of being able to select a weapon. You'll
be shouting out a few four letter worlds as you screw up turns or
trying to pick up an item someplace. Overall pretty simple set up
that shouldn't take more then a minute to adjust to.


Overall Arctic Thunder on the PS2 is a mess with it's main problem
being the horrid frame rate. There is simply no excuse for this,
except for the games very poor development team Inland. It's clear
these guys don't know a thing about programing and don't really care
much about the quality of their product. I can't believe Sony
allowed Midway to release this in this choppy unplayable state.
Aren't they supposed to have something called quality control?
Despite the poor frame rate ruining the whole game I still did have
some fun with it. It's got that great feel of the Thunder series
i've come to love over the past 2 years. I may have scored this game
at least a 4 or maybe 5 if it had ran at a playable frame rate and
was cleaned up some. It's a shame. If you gotta have this then I
would advise paying no more then $20 for it. Even that's pushing it
though. Or you may want to hold off for the XBox version. Its far
better. Looks like after this game and the sucky Cart Fury that
Midway wants to become the next Acclaim.

Summary: