3D Extreme Air Snowboarding is a trick-oriented snowboarding game in the spirit of console games like Cool Boarders. In the game, you guide a rider through increasingly difficult stunt challenges, all of which take place on a three-dimensional half-pipe course. The game's visuals are quite impressive on the LG MM-535, despite some randomly occurring glitches. The gameplay, however, isn't so solid. It's possible to nab some crazy air, but you'll have to contend with ludicrous physics to do so.
Extreme Air Snowboarding was never meant to be a simulation--this much becomes clear shortly after booting up the game. Even if we make allowances for its arcade style, however, Extreme Air's gameplay simply doesn't match the sophistication of its graphics. You can move left and right, and execute a little hop. If you jump near the lip of a half-pipe, your character will somehow manage to leap 30 feet in the air, regardless of your speed going into the jump.
Performing tricks is a simple question of pressing one of five trick buttons. These moves are executed in the same manner each time. If you'd like to add variety, your only recourse is to string tricks together, which also yields a score bonus. The number of tricks you can manage is based on the height of your jump. You'll take a spill if your last trick isn't completed by the time you hit the powder.
Extreme Air looks great, but its character model and animations are the real highlights. Your boarder looks cool in motion, and even does some celebratory hand gestures when he has a good run. Only occasionally does he disappear into the snow, or get stuck in some kind of graphic glitch feedback loop. This is unfortunate, but is--again--rare. This game looks better than many Verizon V Cast games, but it doesn't come at exorbitant V Cast prices.
Like its lackluster gameplay, Extreme Air's sound doesn't match the game's generally excellent visuals. There's some MIDI-based menu music, but the game itself plays out in absolute silence. It's unfortunate that the opportunity to play "extreme" boarding music was missed.
Extreme Air Snowboarding can't quite be called a tech demo, but its gameplay isn't much deeper than that. The combo system should have been developed further, and spin moves should have been added. Most snowboarders don't perform three backflips in a row. It's likely that these three-dimensional trick animations take up quite a bit of storage space, so technological limitations might have prevented the inclusion of more than five maneuvers. Regardless, this doesn't make for a terribly compelling gaming experience.
