Airblade: Web Wombat: Games

Airblade is, for lack of a better comparison, Tony Hawk Futuro. Take the coolest parts of Back to the Future II, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, some kick-arse polygon artistry and the end result is Sony's new title, AirBlade.

Created by Criterion, the game could be called a quasi-sequel to the ahead-of-its-time TrickStyle, which appeared as a launch title on the Sega Dreamcast.

Quasi, because this time it's not all out racing, like TrickStyle was. In fact, there's not a lot of racing to be had.

The game has a plot and while you may think, "screw plots, give me blood-shed," it's no bad thing.

You play a funky young hipster called Ethan, a hardcore skateboarder whose good friend Oscar is summarily beaten to a pulp in the intro. It appears as though Ethan's flatmate stole some secret Airblade technology from his employer, the GCP Corporation. Before the GCP thugs can find the technology - installed in a hoverboard - Ethan makes off with the prize, vowing to get to the bottom of the GCP enigma.

From here it's simply a case of choosing a character and then heading off into the game to unfurl what is actually a fairly interesting story, considering this is an action/sports title. There are five single-player (story, freestyle, stunt mode etc), four two-player and a party-play mode, which helps counter the slightly lacking story mode. Well, that's not true, the story mode isn't lacking, I guess it was over too quickly for my liking and more levels would have been ace, but as it stands it's still an innovative and fun way to play a skating game.

There's heaps of tricks to master

Before tackling the game in full, it's a wise idea to play through the training levels as a hoverboard reacts very differently to the wheeled variety. The controls are essentially identical to Tony Hawk. There are a few extra controls, such as spin, which allows players to quickly ride switch or constantly rotate while grinding, which ups your combo scores dramatically.

The controls consist of grab and kick-flip moves, grind and ollie, plus the shoulder buttons for spinning. On top of this you can push the grab button to swing around poles, either vertical or horizontal, with the resulting inertia often propelling you miles into the air. Because you ride a hoverboard, you can perform more tricks of the insane variety, to boot.

While the controls are similar to Tony Hawk, the physics are definitely not and this is why training is recommended. For starters, you can hover a fair way vertically, provided you hold down the ollie button. You can skitch on the back of cars for a free ride and the overall feeling of 'floating' on a hoverboard is tip-top, though radically different from more traditional skating games.

The first mission has you completing a number of simple tasks, like the objectives in Tony Hawk. But because your 'to do' list is tied in with the plot, you'll want to keep playing through all the missions. You'll have to trick through glass billboards, smashing them, destroy security cameras, take out bad guys (by tricking through them) and performing certain stunts and so forth. The stunt mode and score attack are also pretty cool and placing in position one (no easy task) will unlock extra goodies, too.

While this title doesn't quite stand up to Tony Hawk in terms of gameplay, it does look better than anything out of the Neversoft studios. That said, Tony Hawk 3 on the PS2 should be out by the end of the year and that will probably top it. But for now, this is the bees knees.

It's all about speed, style and, umm, something else...

The texture quality and overall crispness, if you will, are extremely high. The framerate is ridiculously smooth, probably somewhere between 60 and 90fps, though in split-screen mode the frame rate takes a huge hit, suggesting the Criterion lads spent more time ironing out the bugs in single-player.

There was also a lot of work put into the motion capture, and it shows. For an interview on the poor sap Criterion used for this, click here. Particle effects, such as sparks and smoke, look very next-gen and add a bit more extravagance to the look of the game.

The go-anywhere environments are quite special too. The level designers really went to town with AirBlade, creating some really funky locales with secrets, massive grinds and cool areas to explore. One level allows you to fly up a huge skyscraper, cruising around in the air up there. We only wish there were more of them! And perhaps that's the games' only shortcoming. At the same token, the game is quite difficult, with a fairly steep learning curve, which should keep gamers hammering away for quite some time.

The audio is pretty good, with some great sound samples and the music was really quite unobtrusive, which is a good sign. It's a mixture of typical British electronica mixed with a bit of funk to up the 'cool' factor. On the DVD you'll also get extra features, such as interviews with lead designer and concept art, which is a great idea - more like your DVD film extras.

AirBlade was a bit of surprise, to be honest. At first the game appeared to be very pretty but too hard and bit floaty. Fancy that. But the game really grew on me and I found myself going back to improve my score, perform the elusive triple flip and even going through the plot again. It's plenty of fun and is a novel take on the action/skateboarding genre.

Game: Airblade
System: Playstation 2
Players: 1-2
Memory Card: Yes
Developer: Criterion
Distributor: Sony

Rating: 80%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

Airblade is on the shelves now.

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