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Unless you've been living under a fairly large rock for some time then you've probably seen Scooters flying around. A craze among kids that in my opinion is annoying as hell. Even so, it's a speedy way of transport, hence people want to make money in every way they can until the craze is over and kids find some other way to move around. Fair enough, that's business. It's been that way forever and it will probably be so in the future. Every way of transport has been made into a computer game, so it was inevitable that someone had to make a game about Scooting. During this review I will do my best not to be biased, even though Scooting is something I have never done before and do not intent to do in the future.
During the game you scoot on various locations such as a parking lot, a park etc. Your mission is to collect 20 circles that float in the air, naturally in the given time. Some of the circles are at somewhat tricky locations so you will have to pull off some tough moves to finish the level.
The Graphics:
Let’s see, the first thing I noticed in the game is that the various textures are somewhat badly aligned. You can have a look at the screenshot, but keep in mind that it's different when you play the game (worse that is). It's not a very serious issue, but games like Motocross Madness 2 solved that in a brilliant way and it would be nice to see here as well. For some reason I could not play the game with my Creative Geforce, simply because all the textures were "broken", but my other computer (with a g400) did just fine so even though I may be the only one such an incompatibility issue should not have occurred. The models of the kids you can choose to be look ok. They do look like kids and all, but when you play the game they simply lack movement. They lack life.
The Music / Sounds:
Rock/Soft-Rock music is what describes this game's music best. Regular "extreme" sporting music that you've heard in a million similar games before. They could've added more tracks, more special tracks to be specific. When you scoot around you don't really heard a whole lot of sounds really. You have the circle 'thing' sound, yourself talking and various other minor sounds. Since there is not a whole lot of action going on in the level beside yourself collecting circle 'things' you do not expect much more sounds. I would give a higher score if there were more things going on when you scoot around, and actually sounds coming from them as well.
The Gameplay:
Finally. This is actually what I was looking forward to comment on. This was bad, really bad. After 10 seconds of game play I was already frustrated with the fact that turning while you move forward etc does not work. You loose much speed, and the chance of making a huge jump is much lower. Another example of this is when you're going up a hill. Let's say you go in from the side such as this | |. Now you would have to turn a bit to the right so you can progress upwards, but that is precisely where the problem lies. You can't! In fact you have to go back, turn around back there and try going upwards again. I am positive that if the Gameplay was better then I, and for not to say every other person who will try this game would like it a whole lots more. There are not a whole lot of tricks you can do, naturally because of the limitations the transport device has. You pretty much try to gain as much speed as possible and leap over ramps etc to get bonuses. It would be cool to at least be able to attempt 360-degree jumps, sort of like snowboarding.
Multiplayer:
Unfortunately there is no option to playing against/with people so there is not much to comment on. It might be a bit fun to have a split screen option, but then again - it isn't here.
Conclusion:
X-Scooter is in my opinion a game that can be fun for approximately 30 minutes, but after that you should be fairly annoyed with the gameplay and the fact that you have to finish 4 levels before you can save the game. Despite lacking multiplayer options, graphics and sounds of today's standard, replay functions, tournament playing +++ it might be a fun game for kids who love to scoot, and who has nothing better to do in the winter cold.
