GO! sports skydiving.

[tekkentool]

i made a review of this on the other board, but soon as that just seems to gather dust im re-reviewing on this board.

Go sports skydiving is a title with some bad karma, the game scored a 3.2 out of 10 from IGN, with a metascore of under 50. and to me that makes no sense, this is not a bad game.
Presentation:
Not really much to say, bright menu's that get you where you need to go and a useless instruction manual.

Gameplay:
now for some reason, this is the section that gets the most hate from reviewers, which is strange, because for the most part i think it works great. there are two main game modes, formation and landing. formation has you controlling your skydiver with the sixaxis, tilting him(or her) where you want to go, and twisting when you want him(or her) to twist. again for the most part it works, it just takes some getting used to. something i don't believe the IGN editors did. one of the great things about formation is that you will really know when you are kicking arse, because you will really FEEL efficient, a handy feature of formation is that it can be played with any number from 1-4 of human players. which makes it a very fun co-op game, because you often feel like a team when you do it. formation mode can be played online, which i can't test because there was no-one else to play with, literally no-one online. it's strange the way online can be craved so much in games like super stardust HD, but when put into another game is never used. i guess there is only so much fun you can get out of the game. the control in formation can be frustrating, and it will be frustrating when you start out, but learn the controls, because it does become fun. the other main mode is landing. this mode has you falling and performing stunts to earn points, then at a certain altitude releasing the parachute, the releasing parachute mechanic is quite well implemented, because the lower you release it, the more points you get, giving you a sort of last minute decision making can-i-squeeze-one-more-in feeling, which is fun. after releasing the parachute, you must fly you're way to the nice oversized target on the ground. this is handled very interestingly as you use each analogue stick like the actualy cord you pull down on to turn, while you also apply extra turning force by tilting the six-axis. this work quite nicely and i think it has been implemented right. a nice touch is the ability to ski over the water for a near endless amount of time. prehaps my only grip with the landing mode, is the lack of levels. there are 3 different enviroments/levels for formation. but only one for landing. though there are 3 different landing sites. i think there should be more levels.


Graphics:
simple, nice colourful. the skydivers models arent bad, nor are they particularly good. the enviroments are pretty, and so is the water. just nice.the animation could use some more work in places though.

Sound:
probably the less said about the sound the better, nice sound effects when completing formations or stunts are accompanied by crap music (except for the failure music, that's awesome).

Overall
i think for the price you americans pay you are getting a good deal of content, it feels like something that started out as something larger, then got scaled down for the PS store. i wasn't dissapointed, and i don't think the avergae person will be either.
7