| Title | : | Skydiving Extreme |
| Platforms | : | Sony PlayStation |
| Publisher | : | Natsume |
| ESRB Rating | : | Everyone |
| Game Rating | : | 8.0 |
| Review by | : | Ken Gagne |
For all the publicity and interest given to "extreme sports" lately, a popular hazardous pastimes has been overlooked: skydiving. Natsume leaps into that void with the PlayStation game Skydiving Extreme.
If you're looking for something similar to Nintendo's PilotWings, I suggest you stick with that game. Skydiving Extreme plays like Bust-a-Groove, and is in fact from Metro, the same developer behind that line of dancing games.
In Extreme, skydiving formations are formed by pressing button sequences as they appear on the screen. The order is displayed in cross-shaped diagrams that represent the left and right sides of the PlayStation controller. For example, the sequence "Left-Down-Right" (or "Square-X-Circle") appears as a "V"-shape overlaid on the buttons. Upon first encountering the more complicated routines, your eyes will muddle over its meaning, but with practice, reading these displays becomes second nature.
Each round consists of roughly two minutes of freefall, during which time your team of four divers must perform various maneuvers. The more complicated the moves that a team performs, the more slowly they fall. The first team to land, loses. Making mistakes and being attacked can cause your team to fall more quickly. These attacks are more theoretical in nature, as there is no bodily contact or projectile-throwing that would constitute an actual assault.
The camera pulls some neat tricks during freefall, conveying a sense of weightlessness and dizziness, if not speed. The team never appears closer to the ground than when they first jump. At least there's plenty to look at in the air, with the stages decorated with the rainfall of Kenya, New York's night lights, or the Aurora Borealis. This eye candy has no effect on a jump's performance, but are neat nonetheless.
Despite the inability of the graphics to imply speed, there's a certain sense of urgency to enter the sequence as quickly as possible — even the idea of plummeting to Earth at 120 MPH can do that. The combos become increasingly tortuous as the rounds progress; success in these later levels can unlock hidden teams and stages.
The music is generic, metallic, and a bit reminiscent of Mega Man. More variety in the soundtrack would've added to the experience. True, this isn't Bust-a-Groove, but I've seen skydiving videos set to everything from Van Halen to Garth Brooks; the music has a definite effect. Only a few sound effects survive the rushing wind, such as the sound of breaking glass that precedes an attack. An announcer expresses his amazement at some trickier moves, though one such comment is mumbled to sound like, "Very froody!"
Froody or not, Skydiving Extreme is an innovative application of a popular gameplay type. Not being a simulation, it does not capture the full adventure of skydiving, from training to ascent, to jumping and pulling the cord to landing. As a variation on the dancing game genre, Skydiving Extreme is surprisingly fun and addictive, but — hopefully unlike your average skydiver — short-lived.
This article is copyright (c) 2001, 2007 by Ken Gagne. All rights reserved. Not to be distributed without permission.
Original publication: Sentinel & Enterprise, 27-Aug-01