Gaming Target - PlayStation 2: Sled Storm

Written by Adam Woolcott on March 08, 2002

First Impressions: This game has УMeanФ Gene Okerlund doing play-by-play. How the hell can this go wrong?

Since the release of the PlayStation 2, Electronic Arts' extreme sports label, EA Sports BIG, has churned out a good streak of popular titles. First with SSX, then with NBA Street, and this past fall with the SSX semi-sequel SSX Tricky. And now, EA BIG, along with developer EA Canada, are working on Sled Storm, the 4th game to come from their fancy extreme label. The original Sled Storm on PSOne was a fairly popular game that was a sleeper hit, but from the way this game is being designed, EA is obviously shooting for SS to be slightly more than a sleeper.

Now I'm sure when you think of a sled, you imagine Santa and his reindeer flying from house to house, with 3 tons of butter in the seat so fat boy can get down the chimney. Thankfully, Sled Storm isn't technically a УsledФ racing game. Instead, you're on snowmobiles. Sure that gives the game a misleading title, but somehow УSnowmobile StormФ might not work as well. Eh, hell it's EA, and they're weird.

So, Sled Storm is in the same vein as SSX Ц at its heart it's a racing game, only the kind where doing cool tricks with your snowmobile will be pretty much required to build up a special meter for super-speed, which helps you win those tough races later on. Most of the EA BIG titles use this format, so it's not exactly surprising. Doing the tricks builds up a STORM meter, which is where you get the boosts of speed necessary to win races. It's not as trick-intensive as Tricky (but, there's a slight difference between doing tricks on a little snowboard as opposed to doing tricks on a giant, heavy snowmobile), but you will have to pull a few stunts in order to both look cool, as well as bring in some speed boosts to get you ahead of the others.

Also like SSX, Sled Storm will be character based, with unique personalities, complete with Уtoo cool for schoolФ attitudes and other general methods of being cocky, snooty, and just plain egomaniacal. Just as long as Courtney Cox's dopey husband doesn't do the voice of one of these losers like in Tricky, I'll be fine. Each character also has a customized snowmobile, thus they'll all probably feel different to race with. This is good news, because if all the characters ride the same, it greatly diminishes replay.

Unlike the previous BIG games, Sled Storm features both play-by-play and color commentary. The PBP is covered by former WWF and WCW interview master УMeanФ (or Meaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnn byyyyyyyyyy God hallelujah, if your name is Ric Flair) Gene Okerlund. Okerlund won't be going by that name in this game, but he lends his voice to the title. His counterpart is the usual dopey УdudeФ guy, using lame catch phrases and stuff like that. It'll be interesting to see how well executed the announcing is, considering EA's habit of lackadaisical commentary (such as that Madden NFL game, I'm sure you've heard of it).

Visually the game looks solid, but won't quite be hitting the magic mark of 60 frames a second. It's not 30, but it doesn't quite clock up to the high levels. It's at least steady and stable, so the game won't be a choppy mess, something that's rather inexcusable in this era of powerful game consoles, PS2 included. Since it's a winter sports game, look for lots of pretty white snow and big trees, plenty of ice, and hopefully taunting snowmen to run over. No wait, that's Amped, wrong game. But considering the detail Sled Storm seems to have, a steady framerate that's over 30 frames per second should do very well to keep the game looking nice.