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Johnny Moseley Mad Trix

Score: 4/10

With the Olympics being over, now is the time where people saw all of the great events and try them out. I’ve had a few bad incidents myself over my decisions to try ski jumping and the biathlon without any skills, experience, or the right equipment. I digress, with the growing popularity of the extreme sports, especially those becoming mainstream, the opportunity to market and merchandize becomes evident. On that note, here’s Johnny Moseley Mad Trix. The game plays very much like a skiing version of SSX (so much so, that even the controls are identical with SSX, hmmm…) with grossly simplified physics that emphasizes game play over simulation – which I’m a big proponent of; if I wanted to ski I’d go wax my planks and drive to Winter Park. 

The game itself certainly isn’t the greatest looking game in recent memory, all of the characters look grainy and all of their animations are duplicated amongst each other, even if they aren’t named the same. The backgrounds are even more irritating, most levels don’t vary much. It almost seems as though the background is constantly being recycled with only the course objects changing. Considering that the game is trying to sell itself on its’ style, one would think that more energy would have been expended making sure the game looked amazing. The sound is alright, a decent hip-hop soundtrack keeps a smooth groove during the action and a narrator lists off the tricks you complete – it works well although after a while being told every trick can get irritating. Each of the characters has their own voice actors, but for some reason, each character has maybe 10-15 “catchphrases”. I know that some of these people come from the Valley, but I refuse to believe that they are all this stupid. The cut-scenes and character selection animations are neat the first few times but are irritating after that and for some inexplicable reason you can’t skip them – that’s bad when you choose a character that’s not only annoying but long winded.

 

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The action is where the game really struggles though. The levels are downright barren, its almost more like a cross-country terrain in some areas and considering that this is supposed to be a trick game, I don’t know too many really cool flat land tricks on skis that don’t involve “ski dancing” or something equally sissy. The levels themselves are a varied lot; from a “fantasy” level of San Francisco where you can even grind down on the spars of the Golden Gate Bridge to the rolling hills and village 

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of Lake Tahoe. Like other games of this genre (like Tony Hawk and SSX), there is an abundance of rails to slide on but for some reason whenever you touch the rails (no matter with the tips, tails, or center of the skis) you can slide on them and are immediately centered upon the rail. It almost seems as though it was a glitch in the programming of the title where you can prevent a nasty spill if nearby a rail. Another annoying problem is the sometimes PC-like crashes of the game which happen if you do something strange or unexpected. For instance, I was able to make the game crash 8 times out of 10 just by intentionally jumping into low hanging bridges. It gets even worse; I experienced 6 random slowdowns of the game during an hour’s worth of gaming. This is just unacceptable in a game that can’t be updated or patched.

All in all, Johnny Moseley Mad Trix is a weak game that would have benefited greatly from additional post-production.

Tazman

(February 27, 2002)

It's like my pool is tearing ass around the backyard, but staying still - Carl

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