ESPN Winter X Games Snowboarding 2002

Trying to be Realistic can Lead to Very Bad Times

For many of those who waited frantically for the release of ESPN's newest snowboarding romp for the PS2 turned out to be a little, or a lot, dissappointed. The controls are impossible; turning can be a chore and God forbid you actually get good height on a jump. The graphics are good, smooth with some good textures and realistic facial expressions, but background problems and the lack of courses can be nerveracking. The music is okay, and the sounds of sheer snow can be soothing. The only sound flaw is the monotonous tone of the boards sliding on rails. ESPN Winter X-Games Snowboarding is not a terrible game, but far from a good one. G R A P H I C S - 4.0 Good, smooth textures and nice fog give it a good image. But you often see things disappear from the background. Hmmm. S O U N D - 4.0 The sound is good with some nice riding sounds and music, but that stupid (and sometimes annoying) railslide sound can be pissy. C O N T R O L - 1.5 TERRIBLE! Try to turn...nope. Try to jump...not going anywhere. Whoever programmed the controls for this game must have had some serious muscles to press down on the d-pad so hard. The joystick doesn't help either, and wanna do a trick? Sorry, you have to pay about a million hours worth of practice time first. F U N F A C T O R - 3.0 If only the controls were better, maybe it would have earned a 4.0 But thanks to that, I'm marking it down. The only runs that you can really do anything on are the Big Air contests, and even then just jumping can be a pain. Shame on the control programmers. Shame on you so much.