MTV Sports: Skateboarding Featuring Andy Macdonald Review for PC

MTV Sports: Skateboarding Review

MTV Sports: Skateboarding is ultimately disappointing due to its average graphics, poor collision detection, and loose controls.

Skateboarding games have come back into style recently, thanks to the popularity of Activision's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, which experienced widespread success on various consoles. In a mad dash to capitalize on the phenomenon, several publishers quickly gathered any licenses relevant to skating, assigned development teams to their projects, and hoped that their games would receive the same kind of reception that Tony Hawk did. Now, the push to get the next big skating game out the door has spilled over to the PC with the release of THQ's MTV Sports: Skateboarding Featuring Andy Macdonald. Though it's a fair effort that looks significantly better than its PlayStation counterpart, MTV Sports: Skateboarding is ultimately disappointing due to its average graphics, poor collision detection, and loose controls.

The fact that MTV Sports: Skateboarding is a port of the PlayStation version of the game gives a good indication of what you should expect from the overall visual quality. Fortunately, a few aspects have been enhanced to take advantage of the PC's higher resolutions. Overall, the game's textures look much better than the PlayStation version's textures, although their quality is inconsistent. For example, the enormous MTV texture and the brick textures in one of the first skate parks look fine, but in other areas of the park and on other levels, many textures suffer from severe aliasing problems.

The skate parks themselves are solid and have no noticeable problems commonly associated with PlayStation-to-PC ports, such as polygon warping, but the overall design quality of the levels does vary. Too many skate parks in MTV Sports: Skateboarding look like a generic abandoned warehouse with empty pools and half-pipes everywhere. At least there are a few environments that offer a break from the stereotypical design, such as exhibition park, lunar escape, and flyover, which looks similar to parts of the Los Angeles River. The 3D skater models fall into the same trap as many of the skate parks in that they're acceptable, but they don't really offer much variety. Aside from gender, there isn't much to distinguish one skater from another once you're in the game.

Because it's clearly derivative of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, MTV Skateboarding's gameplay could have been good, but the poor collision detection and equally poor controls really hamper the experience. Initially, you probably won't notice these problems, as the main goal is to pull off some simple tricks and combinations before you move on to the bigger and more complicated maneuvers. Tricks are accomplished by jumping in the air and using different key presses and directional motions to perform the particular move. You can also pull a number of tricks known as manuals, which essentially involve the skater doing different tricks on the board, such as handstands. Also, you can grind by jumping onto a rail and maintaining your balance by pressing two different keys. If the balance meter runs all the way to the left or right, then you will fall off the rail and not receive any points for the trick. Everything is kept relatively simple, which makes it very easy to get into the game right away. But as your arsenal of tricks begins to grow, so will your awareness of the game's problems.

The loose controls become a major source of frustration when you're playing MTV Sports: Skateboarding. Once you've gained some speed and you're able to jump incredibly high, you'll probably be able to pull off four- to five-trick combinations on a standard half-pipe so that the last trick is completed a split second before you make contact with the ground. Unfortunately, the controls can be so touchy that seemingly even without pressing any buttons or by lightly tapping in a direction at the end of a jump, your skater will either attempt to put in one last trick, or he will finish his last trick incorrectly. The sensitive controls can also disrupt your trick timing in midair.

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