Game #1019: Cool Boarders 3

  We still goin' down this Cool Boarders slope!

 Now this is different, Cool Boarders 3 is more than just the third iteration of the series, as we've actually changed developers now. And it shows, it feels very different from what came before, which could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your own personal taste.

 The gameplay is very different. Now we get a charge gauge for your jumps, start charging your jump too early and you'll actually lose 'power' on your jump! The higher the charge by the time you let go of the jump button the higher you'll jump and the faster you spin. If you asked me, I think copying Tony Hawk's controls would be the best alternative, but what they did here works too. No longer confined to limited shoulder button + specific directional inputs, now you get flip tricks on the circle button and grab tricks on the X button, the same button you use to jump which does take a bit of getting used to. R2 and L2 are used to spin around. Overall, I much prefer these controls to what came before it, now doubt about it. In this game they also added, erm... punching. Yeah, L1 and R1 can be used to punch other boarders.... can't say I found it a good addition, but it takes nothing away from the game I think. It's just an amusing new feature.

 While I think the gameplay is much better, I do feel like the presentation took a bit of a hit. Mind you, these character models are better than the ones from the previous game, but the game feels slower. It's not too bad, but I miss the sense of speed I got from the previous games. Heck, the music was what made the first game memorable, but this game's music is just bland rock riffs. The game might have more than one track, I don't know because it all sounded so generic.

 Modes are now divided into Tournament, which is a set of events back to back, Single Event, Practice and Multiplayer. The game is divided into 5 Mountains with 6 events each, and each event has its own track on the mountain. The events are: Down Hill, which is a race against 3 other boarders, Boarder X, which is a race in which you must go through the right gates, Slalom, which is a two man race going through gates, then there's Half Pipe and Big Air, both based on scoring points by yourself and, lastly, Slope Style, in which you race by yourself down the track while trying to score the most points. There's also a sixth bonus mountain in which you must survive an avalanche, not a bad way to end the game!

 Despite the game feeling slower than before, I gotta say I really enjoyed the changes brought to the series. I found this game to be more enjoyable to play than the ones that came before, so I'm excited to see how 989 Studios tackled the next few games.

6.0