Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Dark Summit

Written by Adam Woolcott on January 21, 2002

Full Review: Dull Summit would be more like it, but then it probably wouldn't sell.

On a rare occasion, a game developer tries to take an existing, stale genre of games, and spice it up with some play mechanics of other games to make something different. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But you must applaud the developer for taking a chance.

So is the case with Radical Entertainment's Dark Summit, a typical snowboarding game on the surface; but when you look deeper into the game, you'll see an interesting mix of mission-based objectives and extreme sports. The mix is interesting and actually works on many levels Ц with a bizarre but entertaining (in a quirky way) story and someЕummЕinteresting characters. It's just a shame that the game is just as dull and dry as week old bread.

Dark Summit is based around the fictional (duh) Mt. Garrick. It's your basic ski resort area, except for a few strange happenings on the mountain that have caused some notoriety. They've got an interesting rule Ц no snowboarders. In comes Naya, your prerequisite main female character: good looks & big boobs, who winds up coming into contact with other snowboarders, and goes on a mission to figure out what's going on at Mt. Garrick. While snowboarding. Well, sort of, because she has some mysterious guy giving her objectives over her Nokia telephone (yessir, product placement is alive and well in snowboarding adventure games). Yes, it absolutely sounds campy and outlandish, but that's basically the point. The story never comes off as serious and that's definitely a good thing.

As I said, Dark Summit is based all around mission objectives. Completing the various missions, which do relate to actual snowboarding activities most of the time, will net you Lift Points, which unlock new parts of the mountain to race around on. Some of the missions have you do so many types of grabs, and others involve outrunning (errЕoutsnowboarding) the ski patrol who's out to poke you in the eyes with their skis. There is some variety in the gameplay, for sure.

The trick system is pretty easy to pick up on Ц it's basically just pressing the buttons in combination, like triangle, triangle, square, or something to that tone. What's interesting is some tricks don't get unlocked until you get so many lift points & equipment points. These 2 point systems are the backbone of progressing through the game.

Lift points are the points necessary to unlock new areas of the mountain, and are the reward for completing the various missions. You can repeat the missions if you fail, so no worries there. Equipment points are used to unlock new outfits and that ilk; nothing but cosmetic things. However both are necessary to progress through the game and to learn new tricks.

Along the way you'll also unlock new playable characters. When you complete a mission involving the hidden snowboarders, they are unlocked into your list of playables. This if course increases the replay value of Dark Summit, which is definitely a feature DS had in spades. Replay is easily the very best feature of Dark Summit Ц the problem is, will you want to play it that often?

There's only one small problem. The game is just really, really dull. It doesn't suck, really, but it just feels so pedestrian to play Ц kinda like sleepwalking through the game. The substance is there, sure, but the atmosphere is so ho-hum that it's impossible to really get into the game.

It doesn't help that the track design is also very blah. Snowboarding games like SSX have amazing track designs, with lots of shortcuts and traps & insane jumps. Dark Summit has a few of these, but not on the level of SSX or Tricky. Most of the time you're just sliding down the tracks doing the missions and pulling off tricks when you have the chance. I wouldn't say they're terrible, just somewhat boring.

There's some multiplayer that does increase some fun Ц you can go head to head with a friend and race down the tracks. Or if you're still playing solo, you can just practice the tracks to get a handle on some of the traps.

Controls are pretty tight and responsive Ц as I mentioned before, the tricks are pretty easy to pull off, but some of the tricks require a lot of button presses to complicate things. Then again all games do. I prefer the digital pad over the analog stick in Dark Summit, just because I find it easier to spin and flip. However both will do you well.

Like Dark Summit's gameplay, the visuals are rather dull. They aren't really terrible, but rather grainy and not even as good-looking as SSX, which was of course a launch title. There's a lot of detail and some nice lighting effects and a decent draw distance, but the whole package adds up to something we've all seen done better. It's good enough to be called nice visually, but you'll definitely notice it isn't one of PS2's prime graphical standouts.

The sounds are just as dull as well. The voices are well done with just the right amount of camp to go along with the wacky storyline, but the rest of it is really not even noticeable. I know there's music during the game, but I can't describe what it's like because it's so faint and weak that I barely noticed it was there. I heard Naya falling on her ass and talking smack over the music most of the time, instead of blending in with it.