MTV Pure Ride

by THQ

Product Features

• Feel PURE snowboarding freedom as you explore vast mountains, compete with professional riders in tour competitions or build your own mountain to RIDE.
• Pull your goggles down, pick up your line, and drop-in to the truest snowboard experience ever created. It's all about freedom. It's about making split-second decisions and dealing with the consequences. Pick the wrong line, you will crash-and-burn. Pick the correct line, you quite possibly could experience the ride of your life.

Product Details

• ASIN: B00004U624
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches ; 3.2 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #53,149 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Experience downhill snowboarding on your PlayStation. MTV Sports: Pure Ride emphasizes the freedom of snowboarding with multiple runs on large mountains. The game's "build a mountain" feature allows players to choose from three different mountains on which to place rocks, trees, jumps, and rails for customized gameplay. Tricks include front and backside grabs, flips, and twists--thousands of trick combinations are possible. Take to the slopes in locations in Canada, France, Japan, South America, Sweden, and the U.S. Choose from four professional riders and 20 authentic snowboards. Game modes include half-pipe, super-pipe, big air, and slopestyle events.

GameSpot Review

It's the third time around for Radical and its MTV series of PlayStation snowboarding games. While last year's effort, MTV: Snowboarding, is enjoyable for its depth of play, the game's graphics leave visual purists with a sense of yearning. This year, Radical has spruced up a few things, but basically, it has rolled out the same game. MTV: Pure Ride is an excellent snowboarding game, but it's yet another example of a development house shifting the majority of its resources to the next generation of hardware. Like last year's game, Pure Ride is simply loaded with options. The core of the gameplay takes place in the tour challenge mode. Here you begin by picking one of five selectable characters and one of six boards to rip with. As you begin each event, you are faced with the challenge of placing first overall through three events: half-pipe, big air, and slopestyle. As you defeat each circuit, a new circuit opens. There are nine riders (including four real-world pros), 14 boards, and extra courses to unlock when you make it to the top of the leader board.

Pure Ride gives you ample chance to learn how to play. Before you hit the tour, you can polish your skills in the specialist or stunt modes. In the specialist mode you may practice the separate events that are commonplace on the tour. In each discipline you begin with a target score to reach. If you make the target, the next track becomes available. In the stunt mode you are faced with scenarios that gradually build in difficulty. It begins easily enough with a simple gap jump. But the testing quickly graduates to a sequence of rail tricks that must be performed error-free for you to advance. As if all these modes weren't enough, you may also cruise down any of the open courses at your leisure in the free-ride mode. Or if you've become tired of the courses that Radical provides, you may jump over to the build-a-mountain mode and set up your own personalized stunt course. Two players may also face off head-to-head in races down the open courses. While very few amendments have been added to the original formula of last year's game, Pure Ride's options definitely keep it real.

If you're looking for a pretty snowboarding game to impress your friends with, MTV Sports: Pure Ride shouldn't be on the top of your list. If you manage to stay on course and keep a good speed, nothing seems overly offensive. The impressively long field of vision lets you prepare for the terrain ahead as the draw-in is rarely noticeable. The animation of each trick is smooth, but the camera is so far panned out that it's often difficult to tell an indy grab from a mute or a stalefish from a backside.

It's when things slow down after a crash that Pure Ride's graphical imperfections become apparent. The scaling of some of the objects is surreal. The picnic tables look like they are meant for giants, and the buses placed for obstacles are larger than they should be. The tree sprites are a pixelated mess, and overall the texture quality is just a touch blurry. Normally the game hums along at a steady frame rate, but if you catch major air, which requires the game engine to draw a long distance, it's slideshow city. Your rider also has a tendency to "teleport" onto rails even though he may be several feet away, which can make for some awkward moments. The available tricks are also a bit puzzling. You may ollie up to rails and grind them, but performing board slides isn't possible. Even when it says you're performing a nose grind, it's impossible to distinguish it from any other sort of grind. There are special tricks unique to each rider that require insane amounts of hang time to pull off but are satisfying once you nail them down.

Pure Ride is no snowboarding simulation. Oftentimes when you're coming off a rail the computer will automatically eject you directly toward the next one. You get moving so fast down the mountain that you sometimes catch hundreds of feet of air off the smallest of hits. But if it's excitement you're looking for, Pure Ride has plenty to spare. Radical has set up the game so that if it's played correctly, it's a blast. Once you discover the timing needed to land each combination of tricks, the expansive courses open themselves up to getting burly. The courses are more than branching as they are full of new areas to discover. It's easy to find a new line each time down the hill while attempting to one-up your previous score. Considering Pure Ride carries the MTV license, it's surprising that the game's soundtrack doesn't carry a group of A-list recording artists. Instead you get what is described as a compilation of some of the world's hottest up-and-coming bands. What you really get is a bunch of songs from groups that are still unearthing the mysteries of the bar chord. As you might expect, the majority of the music is grunge/rap rock, but there is one nice dub-influenced tune thrown in that truly reflects the snowboarding vibe. The sound effects get the job done: Digging your edges into the snow emits a raspy scrape while gently carving provides that wonderful whooshing sound that sings hard-core snowboarders to sleep at night.

While not necessarily a leap ahead of last year's release, MTV Sports: Pure Ride is a solid snowboarding game with enough options and tricks to keep you busy for weeks. The gameplay is fast and intuitive, and while the graphics aren't eye-popping, Radical has managed to capture what is most important in snowboarding games: the spirit of freedom.--Shane Satterfield--Copyright © 2000 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Probably the best snowboarding title for PS1, February 19, 2002

By 

punkviper (Pittsburgh, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: MTV Pure Ride (Video Game)

Radical Entertainment has done 3 Playstation snowboarding games. The first was ESPN X-Games Pro Boarder back in 1998. It went up against Coolboarders 3 for best game honors and won. After that came MTV Sports Snowboarding, which upped the ante a bit while maintaining respectability. The 3rd installment is this game, MTV Sports Pure Ride, which plays and looks similar to its predecessor. Radical's trio tend to win out over CoolBoarders in the options and realism departments, though some will still swear by 989's CoolBoarders series. Pure Ride is certainly not the prettiest game on the block, but neither is the competition. What puts it over the top is Pure Ride's range of activities. Not just a simple race game, there are a diverse array of things to do, like the half-pipe, big air, trick runs, competitions, and a create-a-mountain mode that gives you control over a fairly large course to construct as you please.

Not leaps & bounds better than the CoolBoarders series, but slightly less cartoonish and with a better focus on the various modes, instead of a hodgepodge of fighting/racing/tricking. Certainly underrated.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars decent..., November 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: MTV Pure Ride (Video Game)

Snowboarding games aren't my favorite.. I'm more of an RPG gamer. However, Pure Ride is an incredible amount of fun to play and it's one of those games you never get tired of. Lots of board choices, fair amount of riders, and a lot of good slopes. The tricks are interesting, although sometimes it is a bit difficult to hammer out the really high scoring ones. The graphics are smooth and visibility is good for the most part, but at some points it's hard to see what's ahead of the rider. The only other gripe I have is the soundtrack.. 10 songs isn't too bad, but I'd prefer a better selection. All around I think it's a great game and at least worth renting for a while. There's also some pretty cool videos to unlock and watch.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this game rocks, May 11, 2002

By 

Chris Harmon (tampa,FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: MTV Pure Ride (Video Game)

this game is so fun i could have played it all day long!u can evan create ur own slope!u should buy this game on the spot if u want to play 1 of the funnist games in the world!