[Subtitles by danielsangeo] Ho ho ho! Welcome to the Christmas
episode of the Game Dungeon. Today, we're looking at a ski game. And, once again, I'm operating under my
old standard that Christmas equals snow. So by that logic, this is a great Christmas
game because it is chocked full of snow. I'm really not trying to dodge
actual Christmas games to look at, but almost every Christmas game I've
seen falls into one of two categories: a minigame that you can do in five minutes, or some existing game with a
Christmas skin on it. There's a FEW exceptions but
that's, what, three games? I'll probably cave in eventually and do
one of these, but... let's just go skiing. So here we are in the ski lodge
to pick what you want to do first. Which is Career Mode, because every slope
except one is locked off by default. Next, we pick our skier. We have a generic guy in his early 20s. We have a dude bra in his early 20s who looks like he has been carefully
engineered by MTV producers to appeal to a certain demographic, but he's probably just going to
annoy everyone, including the demographic they
want him to appeal to. We have a guy in is 40s rocking
a mullet AND mustache, is wearing the loudest ski outfit
by far, and judging by the style, looks like he could've just kept
it preserved since the 80s. He also has matching
war paint to go with it. And we have three generic women in their
early 20s who all look like the same person. So who should I pick? Let's get real. There is always
ever only one choice: Business in the front, party in
the back! Let's go! After visions of skeletons, we're dropped
off by helicopter and we're ready to ski. Okay, I have to interrupt here.
We have a problem. This game was designed for a 4:3
ratio screen. Now seeing as how it came out in
2007, it SUPPORTS widescreen, but really all they're doing is
chopping off the top and bottom, and possibly zooming in also. So what this comes down to is
trying to watch this in native widescreen makes me
sick, because it's so zoomed in. Eeeughhhhuhggghhh... So I'm going to split the difference and
use that blur effect you see sometimes. I exposed test subjects to this
and it made them less sick, so that's what I'm going with. This is probably one of those problems
that could be fixed with two lines of code, but hey, we don't have the code so here are. Now this is an arcade-style game. You go down the slopes, do some tricks, and the game has stunt challenges or
collectibles to grab littered all over. The more of these you do, the more you
progress to unlock new slopes, and... That's basically the whole game. So, um... that's the
core review, we're done. Have a Merry Christmas. I'm going to keep going to pad this
out, but this is one of those games where you know exactly what you're
getting into in the first two minutes. I think I'd better talk about
the music for this one. I've actually been cheating and this is
just some generic rock to fill in the gaps. The actual music to the game has
a bunch of licensed tracks and I don't think I care for any of them. It's mostly either light rock,
acoustic or maybe alternative, but it's mostly what I call "whiny rock". I don't know the official term, but I'm
sure music fans know what I'm talking about. They'll have a simple
enough light rock song, but then the singer sounds like
he's whining about something. [whiny]
Nyeeeh-nyeeeeh-nyeeeeh-neh. Y'know, something like that. Here's some samples from the actual game. ["...I run away before I do ["Something I don't want to do
Don't break my will ["I will be..."] ["...then I start wondering ["If you're cryin'
or is it just raining...?"] ["...front man just sucks ["What a perfect day to commit suicide ["What a perfect day to write
the story of my life ["Goodbye mom, bye-bye dad
I'm glad that I had parents like you..."] I'm not against something more emotional, but there's a difference between something
really heartfelt, versus some guy whining. Even then, you can still make up for that. Okay, just to pick on a band, Stabbing Westward has a lot of whining
in their songs--there's no hiding it-- but the rest of the music will sound so
bad ass that it kind of balances out. This soundtrack doesn't
really pull that off. ["...warmth of your heart
Make mine fall apart ["Please see me off to--"] Now looking online, it looks like
a lot of people enjoyed this music, which might make me the odd man out. So if you've seen some other episodes
and find you hate my taste in music, then yeah, you might really like the
soundtrack to this game, but boy, not me. Oh hey, I forgot. Maybe I should
mention the title of this game. Quick, without looking at the title of
the episode, can you remember what it was? Yeah, here it is: "Freak Out -
Extreme Freeride". I've played this game a lot and I
never remembered the title until now. It's always been "That Ski Game". If it was up to me, I would name it
"Slopes 2007" or something. Keep it easy. And I'm honestly as surprised as
you probably are that they included the "E" in "Extreme". If popular culture has taught us anything,
it's that vowels are not "extreme". Maybe there was a copyright
issue in doing that. So anyway, I like That Ski Game. I think it's simple but good,
but I'm easy to please. I have a checklist of what I
look for in a winter sports game: Nice environments, not have some crippling problem
that ruins the game, and that's it. It's a good game but it does have a pretty
major shortcoming which I'll talk about now. Okay, first off, despite playing
things a little fast and loose with the physics and reality, you
can easily wipe out in this game. We have ragdoll physics and for
being almost a ten year old game, I have no complaints about that. In fact, skiing kind of lends itself
to more spectacular wipeouts anyway. Unlike snowboarding where you just
sort of flop around when you wipeout, in skiing, you have four
different pieces of equipment which can cause your limbs to bend in ways
you didn't think were possible, impale you... the possibilities are numerous. And on top of the ragdoll system,
once you start wiping out, the character just sort of knows
he's screwed and accepts his fate, so he tends to default to a fetal
position, all things being equal. So this is great. I appreciate what's
at stake doing a stunt all the more if I can see what happens
once it goes wrong. So what's the problem? WELL... THE GAME IS A LITTLE TOO
IMPATIENT is the problem. Say I really screw up and it's not
going to be just one collision, I'm in for a whole hillside of pain. Well the game decides after about
five seconds or so to just reset you so you can't see everything play out! THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING! I WANT TO SEE THE CONSEQUENCES
OF MY ACTIONS! DON'T CUT ME OFF! LOOK AT THAT! I DIDN'T PRESS ANYTHING! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! What kind of message is this
sending to players? That if you screw up bad on the
slopes, God will jump in and reset you, nothing to worry about, give you a
high-five for effort? No, no, no. In addition to not
interrupting gravity here, I wouldn't mind seeing a quick medical
report on just how bad the damage was. Did I break bones? Tear tendons?
Get paralyzed from the neck down? Did I even survive? Yeah, look at that. I don't know. Some of you may have seen the
game "Stair Dismount" where some stickman falls down a
flight of stairs and it gives you feedback on
just how much it hurt. There really needs to be a marriage
of that kind of system with ski games. I mean, most of them want things to
look real, right? So let's do it! I like skiing though I don't do
it very often. Nowadays, I just sort of take what I can get because you have to get
transportation to the slope, coordinate it with other people, the
fees for everything are kind of high, and hey, there has to be SNOW. This is going to date the video, but last year was the warmest
December I've seen in my life. NASA, too! I didn't look at charts or anything; I just realized I could walk
outside with shorts and a t-shirt, the grass was green,
and birds were chirping. It's only a little bit better this year. Dammit, I picked on Australians
in a previous Christmas episode, and now they're having their revenge. That'll teach me to want snow! Well, this game HAS snow, that's
why I like it! The last time I went
skiing was a little odd. On the road leading up to the resort, there was this booth at the front stopping
everyone asking what they were doing there. My friend and I told them
skiing, and they let us go. We're still not sure what was going on. I mean, did they think people
were going to bomb the ski slope? Would asking people why they're
going to a ski slope really fix that? Why tip people off to begin with? Wouldn't secretly having a
bomb-sniffing dog in the parking lot make way more sense if they're
actually worried about that? Which they probably don't need to be? What's more is, later, we left to get lunch, then came back and there was a
LONG stop of one car. Here's a dramatization of what
my friend thought happened: "Hello, sir. Can I ask what your
business here is?" "BOMB! I mean, SKIING!" Anyway, that ended up being a
memorable ski trip because that particular resort I think
was playing a joke on the skiers. See, most ski resorts grade the hills
by beginner, intermediate or advanced. I'm firmly an intermediate skier,
so I went on this lift to a peak where there was an advanced slope
and two intermediate ones. Cool. Well, when I got up there, I
wish I took a camera because it was a
full-on blizzard at the top. It was already night, trees were
flying back and forth, snow stinging because it's
coming down so hard, and up at the top, there's this
group of maybe 20 or 30 people, looking like they're pretending to just
be casually chatting and chilling out, except this is NOT "chill out" weather. A lot of them are looking around
nervously and I see why: The signs lied. These were not intermediate
slopes; they were all advanced. They were WAY too steep, plus there was this icy crust that had
formed over everything, not even snow. So what was really happening was
more and more skiers were getting stranded on this mountain because they were like me and thought they
could do at least ONE of these slopes, but then one look tells you
that's not happening. Well, for some reason, taking off my skis
and WALKING down never occurred to me, so I decided to just do it anyway. I made it, but I got lucky, too. If I were to do that slope ten
times with my skill level, it would just be a matter of
time before I screwed up and I'm not sure I'd be walking today. I've never gone THAT fast without
a motorized vehicle in my life. I guess all those other skiers
got rescued. I don't know. So back to the game--why am I talking
about this game in particular? Well, this game came out on
several platforms including PC, and let me say, PC tends to get the
short end of the stick on winter games. I want to say most out there
have been console exclusives. This one was a 2008 Macintosh exclusive. What? Most of the time, if the PC does
get something, it's some formal Olympic event
or downhill jump game. Which I guess that's okay for some people, but I like things more wild, like I'm
just going down the side of a mountain. I want to not be sure if my skier
will get attacked by wolves or not. As long as I can have that doubt, I'm good. Of course, NOW we're starting to
see some good options, but for a long time, there were
slim pickings on the PC. I guess there's "Shaun White Snowboarding" and there's "Stoked" if you like a
nasty vignette filter on everything. What else? Yeah. The point is, having a competent
ski game on the PC in the past 15 years is an
accomplishment in itself. This game was sort of a light in
the darkness. Mm-mm! Mm-mm! But again, I don't
give points for nostalgia, and this may sound crazy coming from me, but I think in time, this game
is going to become obsolete also. Most games that doesn't happen to, because even if they're dated, they
have other things going for them, like great music, interesting story,
a unique environment, and so on. Except for mullet ski warrior here,
I'm not sure this game has anything that won't be thoroughly better
done either now or in the future. It's a good game, but I think
it's one that could be completely replaced given a long
enough time span. It's a placeholder in time. [music] Nice! YEAH! GET HIM! YEAH! Oh... excuse me. Okay, now I'll end this in saying this
game does, in fact, have an ending. It surprised me. Now, unfortunately, I'm not
going to show it to you because you only get ONE chance to see it. In order to see it again, you have to
play through THE ENTIRE GAME AGAIN, not just the last level. So instead, you're going to get
my blurry memory presentation. Okay, so you win the championship
or get all the collectibles-- I forget what the criteria was-- the camera comes back to the ski lodge,
then it pans over to the right here, and we see two odd things: First, we realize there's no door. This lodge is exposed to the
open snow, so that's kind of odd. And second, we get a dead skier. No joke, he's either dead or
seriously injured. Here's how I know: he's slumped
over the railing with his skis on. If he was just drunk or something,
he wouldn't have his skis on. Nobody wears their skis into the lodge. He probably did a trick where he tried
to ski off the roof of the building but it obviously didn't go well because now he's slumped over a
railing in the cold and not moving. I think he's dead and nobody here cares.
They see dead skiers every day here. Did I remember the ending wrong? I don't think I did, but I guess you have
to play the game to find out for sure. So have a Merry Christmas
and enjoy the snow. Unless it's raining like it is here... in the mid-northern hemisphere... in December... HUMBUG! [music] Oh man... [jabbering]
I love Ross's game dungeon. He seems to go out of his way to provide some real in depth coverage of some games I'd never have bothered playing otherwise
I too share the wish that medical reports were in games like this. I loved how Skate showed a little paperdoll with all the broken bones you got from fucking a landing, Steep would definitely benefit in amusement from the same thing when you smash into a tree at 100kmph.
Heyyyyy Ross' Game Dungeon getting some love!This isn't his best one (he's trying a new formula) but I'd really recommend checking out some of his previous ones, especially his recent Deus Ex episodes.
Also if anyone hasn't seen it already, this guy did "Freeman's Mind". Essentially a 'let's play' where he narrates what's going through Gordon Freeman's head during Half Life. Here's episode one, it's fucking brilliant! https://youtu.be/5SQhfkpX9bc
I just wish he'd do Freeman's Mind for Half Life 2.