Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A fun and entertaining game, with too short a shelf life, January 29, 2002
I've never been a big fan of the whole skateboarding/snowboarding genre of games, but Dark Summit turned my head. Whereas in most games of this type, the object is simply to do tricks to get the highest point total, Dark Summit has a storyline and a goal. Snowboarders have been banned from a mountain, and your goal is to find out why. Turns out the government doesn't want them there due to the tendency of snowboarders to go off-trail; they are afraid that the snowboarders will discover the secrets they harbor in this mountain.You discover more about the mystery through a series of challenges, which range from showing your skills by doing tricks to avoiding ski patrols. Doing tricks earns you equipment points, which are used to get different outfits & board upgrades. Completing challenges gets you lift points, and when enough are accumulated, a higher level of the mountain is unlocked. You can actually pass through the lower levels you start out with when you go down the upper levels, which brings a nice sense of continuity to the game. There will likely still be challenges to be completed on the lower levels when you unlock the upper levels, so this prevents you from have to go back and do them. The controls are pretty easy to pick up. Special tricks are accomplished by 3-4 button combos, which must first be unlocked by catching special trick icons during your run. For the negatives: the plot is REALLY thin, and generally has little to do with the challenges. Equipment options are limited; I had accumulated enough points to have all costumes & the best board before I unlocked the third slope, making doing tricks outside of challenges pretty pointless. Also, the costume changes are pretty minor, with about 3 different looks being altered by adding sunglasses or something even more minor. Finally, although there are several characters to select from, you can only use the primary one until you finish the game. In all, this was a fun game...a bit short probably, and the lack of additional modes of play (a race mode of some sort outside of the main game would have been nice) give it too short a shelf life. A solid effort though, this game is a good buy.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Awful, plain awful, December 4, 2003
This is one of the worst games, I have ever played.First, the speed of the snowboarding is too fast, totally unrealistic. Second, the graphics are poor at best and the levels are so repetitive its unreal. Third, the game does not give you any incentive to learn the tricks. Good snowboarding games like the SSX series are much better. Fourth, the music and sound is awful, so annoying I had to turn the volume off just to play it. Last, this is a very WEAK attempt to cash in on the success of the SSX games. Save yourself the $10 for this awful game and get a decent game like SSX if you are into snowboarding. This game is so awful, I could easily fill up the 1,000 word maximum I can type in this review just talking about the specific reasons this game is so bad. Trust me, unless you get this game for free, dont even waste your money to rent it....
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly fun snowboarding adventures, February 24, 2005
Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars
What happens when you cross the X-Files with an extreme sport and Gen-X slacker sensibilities? You end up with the video game Dark Summit. The premise of the game is odd, to say the least. You get to play as a snowboarder who has to uncover the dark government coverups and conspiracies, and who has to find out the truth behind all of the recent UFO sightings. Conveniently, all of your investigations can be accomplished while you are snowboarding down the slopes of your favorite ski hill, disrespecting authority, and performing extreme stunts and tricks.
As a snowboarding game, Dark Summit is a little weak. You can accomplish a fair number of different kinds of tricks, jumps and railgrinds, but the game is not as sophisticated as something like the SSX series. I do like how the snowboard leaves a trail in the snow in Dark Summit, but sometimes the trail gets "twisted" or "folded over" so that it seems like the character has Saran Wrap trailing from the end of her snowboard.
The game doesn't have that many stages, but there is a very high replay value for each stage. Each level has multiple pathways, so you need to run through several times just to see the whole level. In the levels that are higher up the mountain you can choose either to stop at the end of the level or to continue down the mountain through a lower level that you have already been to. As you go down the hill you can activate challenges, such as evading the snow patrol for a certain amount of time or performing a certain number of tricks in a set time period. The challenges are set up so that the some activation points contain multiple challenges. The player has to return to the same activation point multiple times in order to complete all of the challenges. Most of the challenges are fun, but a couple are frustratingly difficult.
The player works to earn two different kinds of points. One kind is equipment points, which you get from performing tricks. Equipment points unlocks new outfits and new snowboards. The other kind of points is chair lift points, which you get from completing the challenges as I have described above. As you get more points you open more levels on the mountain. I found it much, much easier to get the equipment points than the chair lift points--I had already unlocked all of the outfits and most of the snowboards before I had even finished the first level. Once you have completed the game you can play as other characters. This is disappointing, especially because the final challenge is particularly difficult--I got stuck for a while with only one challenge left to go before I could play as the other characters.
The two player option is fairly fun. There are three modes: racing, tricks and demolition. Each mode only has one track, but each track is different than the other two player modes. Unlike the single player story mode, all of the characters are available from the beginning in the two player option. The two player option isn't as deep as it could be, but in my opinion more games need multi-player options--it's nice to see one here.
In conclusion, Dark Summit is a somewhat uneven game at times, but it has enough going for it for me to give it a positive review. This is a rare case of the creative combination of different game genres that actually works. While the idea of an X-Files adventure game melded with extreme snowboarding may not appeal to everyone, I found this game to be enjoyable. There are a few issues related to game design and graphical shortcomings, but one can easily overlook them. The game is available at budget bin prices--this is easily one of the best games that I have found in a budget bin.
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