If everyone else jumped off a cliff would you do it too?...If you have a snowboard strapped to you feet you do. Capcom is not usually one to follow the crowd. They have stuck with the 2D game when everyone else has gone 3D. So its a little disappointing to see that Capcom has decided to jump on the snow boarding band wagon. Freestyle Boardin' '99 (that's not a typo) is energetic, but that is it. There is a lot of snow boarding video games to choose from right now. Freestyle '99 has nothing new to offer. The graphics are poor. The characters are too small, and the pixlated. The polygons suffer from some major break-up. Not to make things worse, but this game has more pop-up than VH1's pop up video. The sound effects are hip and have some spunk, but the quality is not there. The control is good. the special tricks are easy to complete. There is a different trick per button. So the only tough part is the landings. Which keeps you playing. In Freestyle Boardin' '99 you can either play for tricks, or play to win or both. Freestyle '99 has multiple characters to choose from each with his or her unique abilities. Each character has a winning and losing stance when they finish a slope. For you Street Fighter fans you might notice Chun-Li's winning stance featured in one of the slopers. Unfortunately the polygon characters are so busy flickering and blurry its difficult to see any detail. Freestyle Boardin' '99 is not a pleasure to look at, but it does provide some fun. If Capcom wanted to follow the crowd with a snow boarding game they should have tried to out due all the others. In stead we have what appears to be a lack of effort with a rush job so they can join the club. It has all the mentality of a twelve year old. Capcom is better than this. I wish they would have realized this and stayed on top of the cliff. Sometimes its more fun to watch everyone else jump off than to jump yourself.
PUBLISHER: CAPCOM
GRAPHICS: 3 MUSIC & SOUND: 3.5 CONTROL: 7
SECRETS: 1 ORIGINALITY: 2 FUN & REPLAY: 8
OVERALL: 4.5