| Splashdown The PS2 is a perfect console to make a water based game on, just take a look at Splashdown and you'll soon know what I mean. The water actually looks and moves realistically and when the sun is setting you are treated to a nice golden reflection in the water; I could go on and on about how beautiful the water effects are on Splashdown but as you already will know that is missing the point as gorgeous graphics don't always make a good game, so that's the question: "Is Splashdown any good or just little more then a test of the PS2's power?" Thankfully splashdown is the former and is one of the standout games on the PS2 and not just because of the outstanding water effects, oh no splashdown plays like a dream (a rather wet dream) it's almost like SSX on water as when you pull off tricks you are rewarded with a better performing seedoo but a rather original feature is the performance meter which fills up with every successful trick and decreases with every mistake and if the meter is down to zero at certain points it causes your engine to stall, over time the meter will also slowly decrease so at almost every opportunity you must pull off a trick to keep the meter at a reasonable height. The courses are well designed and quite tricky to navigate at first, in fact when you start out on each of them getting lost will become a regular thing; some of them are full of opportunities for tricks making it easier to keep your performance meter filled up while others don't have that many requiring you to pull off tricks at every possible chance to prevent your craft from stalling. The graphics are incredible but aren't quite flawless, the water is a beautiful sight and is obviously the thing that the developers have most paid attention to which is understandable as Splashdown is a water based racer but flaws include some slight pop up and some graphical objects such as the racers which look a bit too cartoonish like when compared to the water. Other flaws include the AI of the CPU opponents which even on the easy difficulty setting can be too challenging, they will cause much frustration when you are travelling at top speed and they just seem to fly past. Sadly Splashdown only allows up to two players to play but this can be forgiven as a lot of detail in the water would have to be sacrificed which would just spoil the whole splashdown experience. And it's an experience you wouldn't want spoilt, yes Splashdown is a fine game, which shows what the PS2 can do and gives you a lot of fun and excitement at the same time. Simon Wigham 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Opinions Round-Up "The attractive graphics did originally draw me to Splashdown because I hadn't played a game of this type before, but as it turns out there is a good game there too, good fun and you can admire the water without actually getting wet, good stuff, I highly recommend it to people who like their games to have tricks (in other words, showoffs) oh, and of course water! Chris Wigham |