Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild has some of the most ingenious level design the racing genre has ever seen.

User Rating: 8.6 | Splashdown 2: Rides Gone Wild PS2
By JonathanL | Review Date:
When Splashdown brought its own take on the Wave Race-dominated watercraft racing sub-genre to bear back in 2001 (and the following year for Xbox), it stood as a fun and generally enjoyable semi-realistic take on water-racing. However, it suffered somewhat from being bland; water has, by default, many limitations that asphalt, dirt, and other solid surfaces aren't held down by and Splashdown didn't have the ambition to challenge this. What resulted was a perfectly fun and enjoyable racer that didn't stand out as being too different from previous genre offerings, but provided a good time for those who took it for a spin. In a move that indicated Rainbow Studios had come to understand what held the original back from greatness, Rides Gone Wild is an over-the-top, crazy, fast and engaging racing game that anyone who enjoys going fast in machines will enjoy. In short, it's everything that Splashdown did right, and also fixes a fair margin of what the first title did wrong. It takes maybe five seconds for the player to notice the approach has changed drastically. Instead of realistic but clear colors and surroundings, Splashdown is a toy box of colors; bright, bold, and contrasting. The characters, all broadly drawn stereotypes, are every bit as colorful, and the environments are gorgeous. Of particular note is the title's piece de resistance; the theme courses. Although there aren't many, (less than ten), they're all briliantly conceived, from the crazy haunted mansion to the pirate cove to the absolutely jaw-dropping dinosaur park. What makes these courses so amazing is not the terrific course design and distractions, however; it's that the courses evolve. Over the three laps of a given race, the courses change; some pathways open, others shut, dinosaurs fall apart, and more. The first time through, in fact, its advisable to take one's time just to enjoy the progression; it's obvious a whole heck of a lot of work went into these courses, and although it's all scripted, it's still fascinating several runs later. Many a player will notice something new every time for a many races beyond the first, and noticing these minor touches is not only a neat aspect to these courses, but also drives home the amount of work that went into each and every one. Splashdown: RGW has loads of courses (including simple outdoor buoy-guided courses and fun indoor trick-oriented locales), and they're a lot of fun when playing with friends. That being said, the game's greatest achievement, the aforementioned theme courses, are meant to be handled solo. While it is disappointing that the experience can't be shared, it's easy to understand why. The game always runs at a perfect or near-perfect framerate, and not only do these massive theme stages require a lot of processing power, but on half a screen, they'd lose a lot of their impact. It's a sacrifice, but not aone that effects the bottom line of the game's entertainment value. As mentioned, the other types of racing are fun as well; though much of the game has to be unlocked, the indoor courses really are very creative, and the outdoor mini-courses, while a bit simple, can be tweaked heavily; setting the waves as high as possible makes for some fun physics testing. The unlockable characters are mostly tongue-in-cheek stereotypes, but there's a lot to get to, and Rainbow Studios obviously understands the draw of Unlockables quite well. Evena dedicated and skilled playr will spend many an hour acquiring points to spend on new courses, features, characters, outfits, and more. The racing "system", so to speak, is pretty standard for what is often considered "extreme racing"; the player races their mode of transportation across a course, busting tricks when they get some air for speed boosts. Splashdown: RGW is no different, as players try to hit ramps and waves at the right angle and speed to gain enough hangtime to employ their tricks, of which they can choose from three seperate tiers of difficulty, with said tiers affecting the amount of boost added to the palyers boost meter. Keeping the boost meter filled is important, as the player has to have some boost reserve to make sure small errors, like driving outside the course, isn't an engine-stalling problem, and when completely filled, the boost meter makes the player go evenf aster than normal. While many racing games with stunts thrown in feel like an uncomfortable mishmash of styles, RGW does not fall into this trap. The stunts and their execution flows perfectly with not only the fast-paced and arcadey racing, but also falls very much in line with the aesthetics of the title... the game is built to be over the top, and so the stunts feel perfectly at home in here. The controls are very well-done; the crafts have proper weight, momentum is handled well, and the physics of the craft through the waves are handled expertly. A good racing game has to have a solid foundation of controls and in-game physics, and RGW handles this admirably, with both arcadey elements like tricks and jumping running smoothly with the buoyancy and friction of racing in water. Water racing is really nothing like land-based racing (in some ways, it's quite the opposite), and RGW drives this point home well. Also, tricks are handled well, and they don't muck up the flow of a good race, both in execution on screen and when trying to control the craft through the controller. It all flows together as it should. The graphics, as mentioned, are bright and colorful, rarely ever making an attempt to look truly realistic. What's nice about this is that the water, one of this generation's great accomplishments, is handled well enough to look like water, but not so realistically that it it falls out of line with the rest of the game's very cartoony look. The characters are rather hideous to look at and are totally uninspired, but they only take up a small portion of the screen, so it's not so bad. The framerate is absolutely wonderful, the visual effects are awesome, and each theme stage has a striking and distinct look that is an absolute joy to take in. The audio is actually surprisingly good. Beyond the pretty lame catchphrasing the cookie-cutter characters employ, the background music is very solid, and again, it is with the theme stages that the game shines in this regard, with exciting pirate-themed music during that given stage and the stormy tones of the flooded city driving the player onward. The engine sounds are well-done and the water splashes are on par with the rest of the game's audio. Rides Gone Wild does a good job of fixing many of Splashdown's original issues. It adds much more flavor and excitement to the genre, it has some of the most ingenious level designs that racing games have ever seen, and the gameplay foundation is rock-solid. It does just about everything one could expect from the genre, and does it extremely well.

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