Disneys Extreme Skate Adventure
Great kid’s game or shameless Nokia propaganda? Read on to find out…
Tags: Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure Categories: PS2 Reviews, Reviews
Posted by Jake McNeill on Nov 4th, 2003
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure (title page) | |||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Action | No | ||
There are times when it is appropriate to “Dumb down” games because the target audience is kids. A kid’s game is expected to have a lower difficulty level and easier learning curve, a friendlier interface, and an emphasis on simplicity. Kids games are also often doused in ridiculously stupid “extreme” attitude, and designed to include “cool” kid characters, supposedly to give players something to identify with.
As a result, some of the problems in Disney’s Extreme Skate Adventure can be forgiven. However, in many areas, developer Toys For Bob took the drive to make this game more kid-accessible than Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 too far, which strips any kind of interest anyone over the age of ten might have in this game.
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In the end, a comparison to Tony Hawk 4 is inevitable. Disney’s Extreme Skate Adventure runs on the same engine, has roughly the same controls, and the same “People give you goals to do” level structure. This has the nice effect of starting the game off in a lofty spot, being that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 is probably the best skateboarding game ever made, and if you’re gonna’ take things from others, take from the best.
The first departure from Tony Hawk is the most obvious, and that would be the Disney theme. Players play as characters from The Lion King, Toy Story 1&2, and Tarzan (As well as original kid characters), each skating in areas remeniscent of locations from the movies they starred in, although oddly, players cannot play through areas in the 1-player mode with characters from another franchise. In otherwords, Buzz and Woody are only playable in the three Toy Story levels, Timon and Pumba are only playable in The Lion King levels, etc. While perhaps this change makes sense in keeping the characters in their respective settings, the fact that it limits players in what levels their favorite characters can play is unfortunate.
The second departure from Tony Hawk strips out a lot of that game’s features to make it more simple. No more are the wallride and spine transfer. Gone is the elaborate flatland/grind/lip trick system from Tony Hawk 4 (now replaced with a simpler version). While removing the complexity of the Tony Hawk games to make the learning curve easier for youngsters does make perfect sense, doing so by not only removing the need to use these moves, but the option of using them as well, makes absolutely no sense and does far more to hurt this game than help it.
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The problem is, while many of the vast array of moves from the Tony Hawk games have been elimanated, the difficulty inherent in the level design is still there. The most striking example of this is the extremely poorly-concieved Elephant Graveyard level in the Lion King stages, the majority of which consists of endless rail grinds over a gaping pit of lava. While level goals themselves are ludicrously simple, getting to them in one piece is just as much of a chore as it was in the Tony Hawk games, and without the aid of essential moves like the wallride, getting up to high ledges is even more difficult than before. And while some areas, like the Pizza Planet level from Toy Story, are very inentive, other levels, particularly Tarzan’s jungle stages, are completely unmemorable, with nothing to distinguish them from any other jungle location from any other game.
The presentation is also hit-and-miss. On the one hand, you have the wonderful recreation of the characters and locales from the films, rendered and animated very nicely. On the other hand, you’re bombarded with goal after goal that do little to make use of the game’s licenses. What does rolling a giant boulder towards Scar and rescuing elephant spirits have to do with the Lion King? Why are the thugs from Tarzan daring the kid to jump on various tree limbs? While arguments could be made that in the end this IS just a skateboarding game, but it still makes absolutely no sense to incorporate a license into a game unless it’s going to be used properly.
Well… unless it’s all just about rampant commercialism, which is perhaps the most ludicrously silly element of this game. In addition to the Disney-themed stages are a set of stages created for a set of kid characters to skate in. These kids (cartoony versions of real-life kids that “won” a contest to star in the game) skate about these levels performing obvious excersizes in cross-merchandising, with goals ranging from “Deliver tasty McDonalds fries!” to “Collect three Nokia 5100 Mobile Phone ringtones!” Having such horrible advertising integrated in a game is bad enough, but to be worked into a game with a target audience of kids is unforgivable… Pokemon’s got nuthin’ on Disney’s Extreme Skate Adventure. Slap on a soundtrack straight out of “Disney Radio”, and make sure the word “Extreme” is in the title, and you have a game that’s sure to patronize… errr… please youngsters.
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All told, I don’t really think this is a game for kids. The licenses are mocked by being “dumbed down” so much that a six year-old would think they’re stupid, the gameplay is sterilized of depth without actually removing all difficulty, and the entire thing can be summed up as one giant attempt to exploit anyone that buys into the title for money. No, this isn’t a game for kids. This is a game for money-grubbing business executives looking for another audience to take advantage of. I have nothing but pity if that audience is you.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Well, it used to be Tony Hawk + The graphics do a good job of making the game look like the movies |
7.0 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- Gameplay is "Dumbed down" more often than it's "Made easier" - Advertising at its most shameless level |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure rips out Tony Hawk's soul and replaces it with shameless greed in the form of markettable Disney characters. It's still enjoyable if you can get past being taken for mindless sheep. | |
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Tags: Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure
Posted by Jake McNeill on Nov 4th, 2003 and is filed under PS2 Reviews, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
