It's fun, but be prepared for a serious challenge.
The game play in Freekstyle revolves around racing and pulling off high-flying tricks around a variety of courses, each course with it's own theme. While that by itself sounds fairly formulaic, the execution of the gameplay helps the rather mundane premise shine.
The accelerate and boost/trick tweak commands are mapped to the 'X' and 'Square' buttons respectively, while the four shoulder buttons are used to execute the various tricks using a number of different combinations of the four. When those four shoulder buttons are used in tandem with the 'tweak' command, you can bridge your original trick into a modified version of it's original form.
The more successful tricks and combos you land, the more your 'Turbo' and 'Freekout' meter fill. Turbo does exactly what it sounds like, giving your character speed bursts for excessive air during jumps, or for a last second sprint for the finish line. The Freekout meter activates once it's filled, during which point you have the chance to unleash your characters Freekout trick, which changes depending on what character and bike you're currently racing with. A successful Freekout will rack up points, and upon landing, send your character into a nitro-blazing path down the track, complete with fire trail. During this time a counter is filing down, you can acquire bonus points for any tricks performed, and extend the Freekout with any trick successfully executed.
It's through this trick system that points are accumulated, and the many ramps and jumps littered throughout the course provide ample opportunities to rack up points.
The problem that Freekstyle eventually encounters lie within a number of factors, those being the track designs, point requirements, and rubber-band AI.
Firstly, the game encourages players to gain excessive speed and air during jumps. However, this is severely hampered at times by just too many obstacles hanging and wandering into the players path. Considering the speed of the game, and how the slightest wayward touch of the environment can send a player flying off his bike, the environmental obstacles could've been toned down a bit. In addition, shortcuts are littered throughout the environment, but again, the track design and extreme speed of the came prevent players from exploring all the tracks have to offer.
Secondly, in order to compete races, (particularly with the later races) you're not only required to finish in first place, but you also have to reach a certain point total. So, if you complete the race in first but fail to reach the (sometimes insanely high) point requirement, you have to retry the race. It's this kind of grinding, and eventually tedious game play that serves as a detriment to the fast-paced, arcade style that Freekstyle strives to achieve.
Finally, there is the AI. While the computer racers can be quite aggressive off the line, and try to knock the player off of his or her bike, they are suspect to some extremely obvious rubber-band intelligence. No matter how well you race, they will always be on your tail, and if you have even a minor hiccup, they'll overtake you, and if you don't have any turbo, you're in for a rough game of catch-up. While that kind of AI can lead to some adrenaline inducing close calls, it does make the game a bit more stressful than a game of this kind should be.
Those factors being mentioned, Freekstyle does have an number of positive qualities that shine though.
The graphics, for example, are well done if not a little underwhelming from an artistic perspective, and the game keeps a very steady frame rate considering the speed at which everything takes place. There is never even a hint of slowdown, which helps a lot in giving a convincing sense of speed.
The controls and response of the commands are intuitive and fast, you'll be busting three and four chain combos within the first 15 minutes of game time.
The soundtrack is also implemented well, the various rock songs fit the mood of the game and pick up when they need to, but also sit in the background when necessary and let the motorbikes growl to life whenever the pace quickens.
In the end, Freekstyle's greatest asset is that it's fun. It's easy to pick up and play, and while it eventually takes a turn toward frustration, you don't have to complete everything this game has to offer in order to fully enjoy it.