Developer: Vicarious Visions Publisher: Vatical Release: 02/18/00 Genre: Racing
It is amazing how all it takes is one breakout title to spark a new genre. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater hit like a mack truck and inspired legions of extreme sports games for years. Coolboarders, while not very good initially, was still enough to inspire developers to hit the snow during the 32-bit era. For a brief period snowmobiles had their time in the spotlight thanks to Sled Storm and Arctic Thunder. Polaris SnoCross is the first and only entrant in this sub-genre for the Nintendo 64. Sadly it is not a good one. On a system with far too many racing games this one is forgettable.
Polaris SnoCross is similar to Wave Race 64 as you compete against three opponents in single race or tournament play. Initially your options are very limited: you can only engage in a single event, tournament, or instant action. Single event essentially allows you to practice on any of the courses you have unlocked with no stakes. At first there are only three but more become available as you complete the tournament mode. This is the career mode where you move up the different classes and unlock new tracks and crafts. Each class has three races so they are quick. But it can become tedious for reasons I will get to. Instant action chooses a track, vehicle, and weather condition randomly and lets you deal with the consequences. It can be fun I guess? I never bothered.
The tournament mode is the meat and potatoes of the game. Tournament has multiple classes: you start in the sports class, and work your way up to semi-pro, and ultimately pro class. Each class has three tracks with a day and night segment. As you win you earn wrenches that can be used to upgrade four aspects of each sled such as handling, acceleration, top speed, and stability. There are a lot of sleds and each tops out in each category in different rates. That means an “earlier” vehicle might be better-rounded than a later cycle that has a higher top speed for instance. You can run each class as much as you want to earn upgrades to better your chances of progressing. In fact you will probably have to due to the game’s ruthless AI.
In short order you will notice the rubber band AI is egregiously bad. For the early stages it is understandable, you are using the lowest sled class and must work your way up. But soon you will notice no matter how many upgrades you earn it will make little difference. I have maxed out top speed and run a near perfect race, avoiding corners and even taking shortcuts. And still at every turn the computer is right behind me. The rare times I have been able to build a lead the rubber banding kicks in to overdrive. They always seem to catch up in the last few moments of a race. The rubber banding almost renders the upgrade system useless too. Winning feels more like a game of chance instead of a matter of skill.
The wonky handling certainly does not help. The control of each sled is bad and feels like you are handling a brick rather than a fast moving snowmobile. The handling stat is useless in my opinion as I did not notice a difference no matter how many points I put in to the stat. I had the most success starting my turns early. Even then it still feels like a crapshoot whether it will work or not. The non-existent physics model does not help much either. Even with high stability it feels random whether you will crash or not. There were times I hit a wall at full speed and was able to shrug it off easily. Other times slightly grazing the opposing riders is enough to send you flying. Considering the fact they will be on your tail at all times it will happen constantly and is lame.
It is a damn shame Polaris SnoCross fails at the fundamentals so badly as I like the track design. The maps are large because there are always multiple shortcuts and even paths to the finish line. Despite the snow theme the designers have done a good job imbuing each locale with variety. You will race through a village, ice capped mountains, a frozen ice peak with waterfalls and rivers on the verge of breaking up and my personal favorite, the Polardome, and indoor track. All told there are ten tracks so there is meat on this bone. But the tedium of completing every class twice with little variation other than useless nighttime and snowy weather dulls it.
In Closing
I don’t know what I expected from Polaris SnoCross, a decent racing game perhaps? It has its moments but the rubberband AI ruins it. If I want to deal with a cheating AI I will play Mario Kart 64, a much better title. Polaris SnoCross is forgotten in the N64 library because it is ultimately mediocre.
