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 Review: Electronic Arts' Skydive! 7/07/99 |
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Friday while I was impatiently waiting for my copy of Quake 2 arrive, I headed over to the local CompUSA to browse around the Mac section for anything new (mostly to find a joystick). As I looked through the software for anything new, I saw that the new game Skydive! was available. The press release announcing its imminent release a few weeks ago sounded pretty good so I figured I should try it out. Plus it was only $19.99 too which makes it quite a bargain for a new software release. Skydive! comes on a hybrid CD from Electronic Arts. I was almost surprised that I found it in the Mac section, since many hybrid CD don’t turn up there. The system requirements are pretty low, though they are higher than for Quake 2. Hmmm. That didn’t sound right and when playing it, you can tell that it is not giving the Mac a workout like Quake 2. Anyway they do recommend at least a 200Mhz 603e and 64 meg of RAM to run the game with a 233 G3 as the preferred processor. I ran it on a Beige G3 433/217. Installing the game is a snap and very quick. When you start the game for the first time you do need to set up your preferences because it cannot recognize whether a 3Dfx based card is attached.Once you set it for 3dfx graphics its time to get started. There are 3 variations on what you can do in the game. The first is an accuracy challenge. The idea is to jump from a plane and land closest to the target as possible. The second is a "sky slalom" where you try to hit targets in the sky that are worth points. And the third is a freestyle skydive that lets you show off your moves. I spent most of my time on the accuracy jumping. The 3dfx graphics are pretty good when you first see them, but after a few jumps of the same scenery, it gets old. Luckily they included 6 regions of the world where you can jump. Bermuda, Moscow, Seoul, Normandy, Stonehenge, and Groom Lake. It is quite an eclectic mix, and it helps break the monotony of the scenery. Learning how to jump is easy. There are really only 3 moves that you can do when you jump. They are the flip, cartwheel and compass spin. In the dive accuracy game, the last thing you want to do is one of the moves like that since you are scored on how fast you get to the ground as well as how closely you land to the target. The jumps tend to get repetitive after you have gotten the hang of controlling your skydiver. It doesn’t help that the jumping sequence from the plane is exactly the same each and every time you jump. And, the jumps themselves don’t last for more than a minute or so. Moving on to the slalom was a new challenge. It is harder to control your diver to hit the midair targets than it is to land accurately, but a degree of mastery occurs quickly. What I had originally thought the strength of the game would be was the ability to do aerial maneuvers that would look really slick with a 3Dfx card. The freestyle diving was the section of the game to test this out and, well, it was a little disappointing. When you try a move it is almost like there is a camera cut that plays a preprogrammed "movie" of the move. It doesn’t feel like you have fluid control over your skydiver. When trying the flip move, once you complete the 360 degrees of the flip, the "movie" resets itself with a jerk, like a bad edit in an actual movie. [note: I understand that the acrobatic moves in the game are not actually movies, but I think that is the best way to describe them to get a point across — Randall] In the freestyle game, your score is based on the moves that you make and your ability to do a specific sequence of moves during your dive.
(Click to see larger view)
Overall, I think that the concept for the game was a very good one, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. If the game was not so repetitious with minimal variation and the way in which the diver makes the moves had more continuity with the rest of the dive it would be a much better game. The graphics are pretty good, but nowhere near the level of detail that you would expect with new 3D accelerated games. For 20 bucks it can be a nice game for a while, but many will tire of it quickly because the gameplay is so repetitive and the action of the dives becomes dull quickly. I would rate it a 5 on a 10 scale (assuming I used a 10 scale ;-) as a nice diversion in between games of Quake.
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