When it comes to sports video games, I'm woefully ignorant. I've never stepped into Madden or Tony Hawk, and I can't even name a baseball franchise for the triple. The only "real" sports title I follow is EA NHL, and that's because I see video game hockey as an arcade game. For me, the players are instead mobile cannons, and the sole ammunition available is a single floating bullet, which I must fire at the enemy's netted weak spot. And as my hockey-savvy friends can tell you, it's only been a recent development that I can be reliably trusted to stay inside the norms of hockey... and not go offside right away or make insane power shots from across the rink.
Only one other sport graces my video game library, tennis. Represented by Wimbledon Championship Tennis on Genesis and Mario Tennis on N64, tennis is another sport I can actively understand in arcade terms. Smack ball so that the enemy can't smack it back.
But this month I took a leap into something new, and I picked up two GameCube sports titles. Here's my first thoughts on Aggressive Inline and Beach Spikers.
Aggressive Inline: I've always been afraid of "trick" games. I really wanted to get into SSX, but I have a problem there... I want it to be a racing game, not a trick game. But you can only stomach so many perfect scores for Tony Hawk before you need to take a bite. So Aggressive Inline became my test subject, mainly because I can and do roller blade in real life.
It took me quite a few runs to get even a newbie's grasp of the trick structure. I think my main mental block with trick games is that the button assignments are completely arbitrary. B does some kind of pose, Y does a grind, and there's tons of combos that only exist in the margins of my memory. I don't know if this is unique to AI (I suspect it is), but there's an ongoing experience-development thing going on here that made it very easy for me to learn how to trick. When you first start with a character, they have very poor skills. As you successfully perform the tricks and stunts, your character's skill increases, so the tricks and stunts become ever easier... opening up the ability to combo your tricks and bank huge scores.
Although now I am pretty confident in my blading skills, there are plenty of tasks and missions I have yet to crack. Each level has a bunch of choosable challenges, some of which seem outright impossible until you realize that your skills are constantly on the up. You have to complete X number of tasks to unlock the next level, hidden loading screens, blocked areas, and other expected goodies.
So far, it's good. Real good. The levels are huge, the stunts look cool; I wish I had more experience with these sorts of things so I could tell if this game is better than the average Tony Hawk.
Beach Spikers: Volleyball is essentially tennis. Which makes Beach Spikers into Mario Tennis with bikini babes. Let's get the girls out of the way: they look great and animate better. The make-a-player mode is amusing in its own right; you can create a pair of women to be your team in the Sega World Volleyball Federation and take on a reasonably long World Tour competition.
Given the beautiful beach volleyball arenas and all the options (hair, face, sunglasses, uniform) for create-a-chick, I'm surprised that the game itself doesn't have many options. I would really like to play with the camera... perhaps pull it out for a non-moving faraway view, or lock it into position behind my team. But you can't; the camera always floats, continually following the ball. Usually it does work very well, but it's not exactly the easiest way to learn the game.
Another problem I had was dropping my arcade instincts. Like Mario Tennis, you can't just jerk the stick towards the ball and hit the A button as many times as you want. Beach Spikers is all about timing and careful finesse. Leave the Super Smash Bros. skills at the front desk.
The voice announcer completely sucks. I don't think he read a single complete sentence. Every word he utters sounds like a separate edit. "Round... Two! USA! vs... Germany!" But get past the shitty sound, master the delicate controls, and you've got a great title. I imagine the sheer exposed flesh here may hurt the game in some quarters, but it should still stand as a terrific sports game.
