From the moment this underwhelming title stumbles into action, gamers will be hard-pressed not to notice its painful mediocrity -- Cool Boarders 2001 makes the annual SCEA father-son hackeysack tournament look like a paragon of x-tremity. Imbued with the rough, unfinished sheen of a game well past its prime, this title is perhaps the saddest example of game design inertia since, well, Cool Boarders 3.
From the first race onwards, it becomes painfully obvious that the Cool Boarders engine is desperately in need of retirement, its ugly second-generation aesthetics paling in comparison to the other, superior snowboarding titles on the market today. The pixilated, utterly repetitive texture maps have a disconcerting propensity for warping into new and equally unpleasant forms at a moment's notice. This glaring flaw, combined with the title's blatantly obvious polygon sorting issues, manages to strip the moderately well designed courses of almost all of their visual appeal.
At its very worst, the graphics engine's wheezing ministrations actually mange to undermine many of Cool Boarders 2001's more interesting features -- notably the DIY board-jockey mode. Rather than limiting players to the usual range of licensed Mountain Dew rejects, the more creative-minded gamers out there can make like gen-x Frankensteins and build their very own set of custom boarders. Given the wide range of builds, clothing styles and faces available, creating a digital doppelganger is an enjoyable and relatively painless experience.
Unfortunately, the Cool Boarders engine has the regrettable habit of crumpling into a heap of painful sorting errors the moment anything out of the ordinary rears its ugly head, rendering the custom boarder option near useless in the process. Like genetic experiments gone horribly wrong, malformed limbs and paddle-pop torsos burst Resident Evil-style from the custom boarders' expensive neon sportswear, sending all but the hardiest of gamers scurrying back to the welcomingly prefabricated arms of Barrett Christy.
The flawed execution so prevalent in the custom-board mode manages to seep into each and every element of Cool Boarders 2001's already uninspired design, undercutting everything that could have raised the title above the level of mediocrity. It is as if the designers, pressured to meet their release date, simply closed their eyes and decided that this obviously inferior game was simply going to have to do.
Players will find that the trick system, while significantly expanded from its predecessors, is rendered near unusable by the game's mushy and unresponsive control scheme. Consequently, the plausibly entertaining trick-run events soon transform into an un-winnable man-machine struggle, with players forcing their unfortunate chosen snowboard-jockeys to perform spastic gyration after spastic gyration in a vain attempt to perform even the simplistic of tricks.
Perhaps the game's highest point is its drastically improved track design, bolstering the staid downhill runs of previous iterations with a passel of shortcuts, dramatic trick opportunities and crosscutting routes to the finish line. Unfortunately, given the game's mushy control and less than accurate collision detection, finding many of the more elaborate routes is more a matter of luck than any kind of skill.
It's a real shame that the Cool Boarders series is ending its PSOne run on such a bum note, further sullying the reputation of a once respected series. The weak visuals, soggy control and generally flawed gameplay are sure to leave gamers with a bad taste in their mouths, watching in disappointment as this one-time favorite stumbles towards the finish line one final time, only to collapse dead in a pool of its own mediocrity.
The Bottom Line: Years past its sell-by date and showing few signs of progression, this latest Cool Boarders title is barely worth a rental.
