Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild

Written by Adam Woolcott on September 04, 2003

Full Review: It's like a roller coaster ride, only there's no roller coaster.

Twoаyears ago, Atari and Rainbow Studios released the original Splashdown Ц a pretty looking racing game with a nice set of tracks and great water effects, but ultimately a tad mundane and lacking thrills, yet still a good racing game. Since then, publisher THQ gobbled up the Arizona-based Rainbow, and for their first effort with this company, have released the sequel to Splashdown, Rides Gone Wild. And what a differenceаtwo years makes Ц RGW is a speedy, exciting, and highly entertaining water-based racer that takes what was good about the original (graphics, water effects), and kicked the gameplay up a notch, creating a sequel that far surpasses the original. It might sneak up on you (it certainly snuck up on me), but Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild is a surprisingly solid PS2 racing game that is definitely worth checking out.

Rides Gone Wild features a large amount of race types to draw you in Ц the most important is career mode. In the original Splashdown, the career was a mix of stadium tracks and circuit courses. In this incarnation, the two are split into their own separate career. The stadium courses (the ones with lots of jumps into pools of water, inside an arena full of bloodthirsty savages watchingЕor maybe not) are more numerous than the circuit tracks, though the circuit tracks are much more challenging and exciting, due to the environments themselves. Either way, you unlock new tracks as you progress and acquire points you can spend, which we'll get into in a second. The most interesting addition to career is the ability to УfreezeФ your career, so you don't have to finish the entire series in one sitting. Freezing lets you finish later, but, when you do reload your career, your memory card save is wiped out until you finish the race, to prevent someone cheating and just replaying the race over and over until you win (as you get 3 continues, and that's it). It's an odd, but also very savvy trick to make you earn wins instead of lucking out after a while.

All those points I mentioned Ц the Warehouse is where you go. In the Warehouse you can buy simple things like vehicles and suits for the racers, as well as more expensive stuff like tracks and endings for different characters. The more you race (and you can earn points by just doing time trials and single races), the more points you earn to unlock extra stuff on your way to 100% completion.

The gameplay itself from Rides Gone Wild has undergone some massive changes to the way the races are won. The original Splashdown had tricks, but it wasn't emphasized in comparison to the racing, and didn't really make much difference either way. This time around, the tricks mean the difference between winning and losing. Thanks to the performance meter, which is a little bar on the side of the screen that measures how good you're pulling tricks, you can get your craft to race faster and pass the competition Ц who also have their own performance meter to keep up with. Thus, when you get jumps, you definitely should be trickin', or you'll find yourself losing. On different difficulty levels, you need to keep different tiers of the performance meter high Ц there's 3 tiers, and if you want to win on all-star difficulty, you need to have it filled all the way at all times to stand a chance. It seems like a simple thing when describing it, but without the PM, Rides Gone Wild loses a lot of its appeal.

Aside from that, the basic element of racing remains from its predecessor. The crafts control very well at all times, and the water that can cause you to chop across it can be a serious pain if you don't learn how to take it (think ATV Offroad Fury's preloading jumps, kinda), and in traditional Rainbow fashion, the computer AI is smart and fierce, which is why it's fun to block them from the finish line and see them run right into the buoys at full speed and cost them the race. 3 seconds of slow time for 10 minutes of bliss. Speaking of buoys, staying between them is essential to winning, so you have to be very careful or you'll be forced to do a powerdown unless you have enough juice in your performance meter, which can cost valuable seconds when in a close race. They do tend to place the markers in strange places, meaning you have to be extra careful and learn the track if you plan on winning.

While the stadium tracks are very cool and exciting with thousands of fans and some really sweet jumps, it's the circuit tracks that make Rides Gone Wild so entertaining. Not only are they fast and loaded with crazy turns and oddball locales, there is just so much going on aside from the race on each track that it can be hard to focus on the race Ц that was probably the idea. Imagine racing a track with loads of dinosaurs hanging around, who can actually do some damage to you and your watercraft! Even better, each of the circuit tracks has a different lap each time around, with different obstacles to get in your way and make you grasp a different section of the course. The changes are subtle but usually by the final lap you see a major diversion, which is very cool. With over 45 tracks available in the game (half circuit, half stadium), there's a lot of variety to be had as well.

Honestly though, what makes this game stand out is just how improved it is over the original. All the things I thought were wrong with the original were fixed, leaving a game that has really no major flaws at all. There's definitely things to nitpick, such as the strange trick system that is unconventional but easy to master once you figure it out, and AI that can be a tad too cheap on all-star difficulty. But it really doesn't matter in the scheme of things, as Splashdown: Rides Gone Wild is a surprisingly fun and exciting racing game that gets to be 2 AM addictive Ц as in you're up at 2 AM playing when you should be counting shЕI mean watercrafts jumping over ramps. The dedication of Rainbow to create a sequel that's much improved is duly noted Ц we need many more developers like them, just as long as they don't design an online game with a crappy lobby like ATV Offroad Fury 2 had.

Like the rest of the game, Rides Gone Wild has undergone a visual polish that makes it look very easy on the eyes. The great water still looks incredibly realistic and lifelike, and the vehicles are unique and designed well. It's the circuit tracks that make the game stand out, with the bucketloads of detail on them in the backgrounds. It can get distracting, it's done so well and so believably, which is always a welcome addition to any racing game. The impressive amount of detail in these tracks are some of the best I've seen on any console, PS2 or otherwise Ц it almost feels like an old arcade game that used these kind of tricks to make the game stand out from the pack.

Rides Gone Wild features an interesting path for music Ц in the circuit tracks, the game carries original music built for the particular track, which can be either silly or ridiculous depending on your perspective. On the other hand, the stadium tracks feature a real soundtrack of rock & roll, from the likes of Treble Charger, Audiovent (2 from them, УGravityФ and УThe EnergyФ), and the Donnas, who's УWho Invited YouФ makes an appearance in the game (that's 2 games its appeared in, along with MVP Baseball 2003 from EA). This is much more fitting, really, and is a welcome addition compared to the oddball circuit soundtrack. On the other hand, the voices are pretty amusing in-race, as the competitors will talk trash to each other throughout the race and taunt when doing a big trick Ц I only wonder how they can hear each other given that it's usually pretty loud to race across water in a Sea-Doo. Alas, it's a video game and we can suspend belief for a few minutes, anyway.