Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild Review
If you're a fan of the original, you'll undoubtedly want to pick up Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild.
The original Splashdown had great gameplay mechanics, but it failed to truly re-create the experience of riding a Sea-Doo. Its sequel, Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild, not only improves on the original in that respect, but it also improves on just about every other aspect of the game you could imagine. The tracks in the world career mode are much more creative and thoroughly more enjoyable than those in the original. While there are only eight themed courses, the development team at Rainbow Studios has expanded the number of stadium courses and added a few basic courses that test your beginning riding skills. The trick system has been expanded and now offers a greater reward for performing complicated maneuvers. Ultimately, if you're a fan of the original, you'll undoubtedly want to pick up Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild.
The game features four different gameplay modes: training, career, arcade, and versus. There's also a warehouse mode where you can purchase additional riders, clothing, and Sea-Doos. The training mode teaches you the basics of performing tricks and how to use various riding techniques to improve your performance during a race. Once you're done with the basics, you can move on to learn about more-complicated tricks and maneuvers. Generally speaking, you don't really need to go through the training, since the controls are fairly intuitive, but it will teach you techniques that are useful for placing well in some of the later races.
It's worth pointing out that trick system is a little more dynamic in Rides Gone Wild. Tricks have been divided into three different tiers, and in order to go past the first tier, you have to press a certain direction on the analog stick, which will cause the rider to transition into a second-tier trick. If you want to reach the third tier, you have to press yet another direction to execute an even more spectacular third-tier trick that will automatically fill your performance meter. When this happens, your rider will start to glow, and he or she will be able to reach top speed on the Sea-Doo much faster. It can take a little time to get used to executing complicated tricks and timing them, but you'll eventually become familiar with how much time it takes and how much air you need to execute them successfully. Having your performance meter full is also useful in case you happen to miss a buoy or pass one on the wrong side--whenever you do so, you'll lose some energy from your performance meter, and if the meter happens to be already empty, your Sea-Doo will stall.
That's something you don't want to have happen in the career mode, which is essentially the main focus in Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild. In this mode, you can select from several different riders, each of whom has different ratings in acceleration, speed, handling, and stability. There are also two different types of careers--world and stadium. The world career offers arcade-style tracks set in a variety of environments. You'll ride through the canals of Venice, rapids flowing through a gold mine, a pirate battle, a flooded city, and a haunted castle, and so on. There's a lot of action on these tracks, but that's part of what makes them so fun to ride through. Conversely, the tracks in the stadium career option are far more subdued, but they place a stronger emphasis on technique. In any case, in order to progress through either career option, you have to place above a certain position in each race. You'll also earn points based on your race performance in these modes, and the more points you receive, the more items you can unlock in the warehouse.
Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild Quick Links
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- GameSpot Score 8.2 great
Player Reviews
Critic Scores
- IGN 8.9 / 10
- Game Chronicles 9.2 / 10
- Gaming Age B
- Worth Playing 8 / 10
- Game Rankings 84 / 100
- TechTV 3 / 5
- GameZone 9 / 10
- ZTGameDomain 9 / 10
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- THQ
- Rainbow Studios
- Snow / Water Racing
- Release: Aug 5, 2003
- ESRB: Everyone
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