Gaming Target - GameCube: Big Air Freestyle

Written by Tim Stevens on November 18, 2002

Full Review: Lots of Big Air, but there's nothing to like about its style

When playing games based on dirt bikes and motocross franchises, one has to understand that racing and stunts are both integral to the overall game play structure. Tracks are designed with big jumps and mud in mind, with lots of sliding and lots of dirt flying all over the place. Nintendo has seen its fair share of dirt bike racing on the Gamecube and previous systems in the form of Excitebike, Freekstyle and MX Superfly. Unfortunately, Big Air can't compete with any of those games despite having plenty of promise with its initial design intentions.

There are basically two modes in Big Air simply called Freestyle and Season. The game's primary focus is on the season mode where you purchase a single bike and attempt to rise to the top with a number of wins in the circuits and then earning more cash for more varied bikes. Although this sounds remarkably similar to other racing games, in Freestyle it actually feels more like a chore than anything else. Sure, tracks are varied, but racing around them isn't exhilarating or exciting by any means.

One of the key features of Freestyle is a rather loose physics engine allowing players to perform completely off the wall stunts in a large period of time. The game itself almost feels light on its heels as players feel light as a feather, staying in the air for a good 3 or more seconds as you perform a number of stunts before landing safely on the ground. Although this may sound fun, it's actually one thing you want to avoid while in the season mode because doing such tricks actually stunts your speed greatly and achieving first place standing is far more important than attaining air and performing all types of assorted tricks.

To utilize this physics engine, Paradigm included a Freestyle mode of play where players run through an obstacle filled course while dodging different traps of sorts and performing a certain number of tricks and achieving the set score. When you hit the score, the next track will be unlocked and you can proceed forward, but the mode proves to be very boring as you hit the third track or so repeating the same big stunts over and over again. Moreover, the goals achieved in this mode do nothing to affect the Season mode and make the rewards of opening up more tracks that much more fleeting.

The title of the game would suggest that there would be far more focus on performing tricks and attaining Big Air, but the game itself actually has the tricks as an afterthought rather than a staple of the game play. At its core, the game play of Freestyle is a simple racing game and nothing more.

The graphics in Freestyle are nothing but mediocre, displaying far more bugs than any actual flash. Bikes will fall right through the level and disappear, there's very noticeable clipping all over the place, and accidents look incredibly unrealistic and just downright poor in every respect. Although the physics engine is loose and entertaining for about five minutes, the riders are rigid and clunky and the tracks are uninspired and boring. Compared to other Gamecube titles, and other dirt bike style games on the Cube, Freestyle is the worst of the bunch with noticeable slowdown when two players are playing at the same time. There's nothing here that will impress anyone and the game actually looks like something that was ported weakly from the last generation of gaming.