Rush Down

by Air Hendrix
January 01, 2000 00:00 AM PST

At the finish line, Rush Down's an awesome weekend rental - you'll love every second of it. But only serious race fans and extreme sports junkies should consider a purchase. The game runs out of steam too soon.

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Rush Down lives up to its name with blazingly fast downhill racing. While it's a little too flawed to achieve greatness, it's a wild ride worth checking out.

Xtreme Speed
Rush Down sends you bombing down the longest hills in the world on snowboards, mountain bikes, and kayaks. The game's coolest feature is its rocketlike frame rate, which delivers heart-pounding speed as you blast over jumps, hop obstacles, and even bust off a trick or two.

Each of the three sports presents an intense challenge (kayaking rocks, believe it or not), and the resulting arcade-style combo's pretty cool as you race either against the clock, in a tournament against a CPU racer, or on split screens against a friend. With the directional pad, strong controls let you push your limits the whole ride down. Surprisingly, the analog controls aren't too hot, responding less smoothly than their digital counterparts.

Xtreme Rental
Rush Down suffers from a few other problems. Racing against only one opponent gets kind of boring after a while, and many gamers will be able to conquer each sport's five tracks--and essentially, the game--in short order. The sounds wipe out, too, with feeble in-race effects, terrible crowd noise, and mediocre announcing.

Graphically, the game's solid with interesting but limited racing animations and clean but repetitive terrain. Some pop-up occasionally interferes, but not badly.

At the finish line, Rush Down's an awesome weekend rental--you'll love every second of it. But only serious race fans and extreme sports junkies should consider a purchase. The game runs out of steam too soon.