Snow Moto Racing Freedom is one of those games that I would place in the category of playing Crusin’ USA, Jet Moto or Wave Race 64. It's like a good mixture of all of them, except we’re long past those days and now it’s just a game that looks pretty and runs okay. I know the developers at Zordix AB have made a few good games before such as Aqua Moto Racing Utopia, but somehow Snow Moto Racing Freedom seemed to take a step back and isn’t near as fun as its other games.

Jumping into the game, you have the few options available, picking a racer that is either male or female, choosing their nationality (which was kind of pointless to me since you see their back of the racer 90% of the time) and the color of their racing suite. Okay so there are only a few options here, but that isn’t the problem. My only issue with this game is there simply aren’t many options. At least give us the opportunity to choose from a few snow mobiles that we can upgrade as you progress through a game. There was none of that and that.

The menu was basic and the user interface was cluttered. I would have to say, even after starting my first race, I couldn’t ignore how many HUD’s were on the screen. For a game that didn’t have much to offer, at least it looked pretty good, graphically. However, having all that crap placed throughout the screen takes away from the visual experience that this game has to offer.

If there’s one thing I cannot stand as a gamer, it’s not having a tutorial. It’s hard enough that games no longer come with instruction manuals, but being thrown into a game and not knowing how it functions or what you’re supposed to do is extremely frustrating. It wasn’t long before I figured out what I needed to do.

The gaming structure is quite simple. You have three championships that are offered over three local. These are mostly just for a single player mode. There’s Sprint League, Snocross and Freedom League. Each one of these have about 3 to 5 races that span over eight championships. Your points are racked up depending on the position you finish in each race. Whoever has the most points at the end, wins. Simple, right? Well here’s the breakdown.

Sprint League is pretty much unstructured, the map has checkpoints throughout the mountain that you have to discover. You have to hit these markers in order, but it’s not on a track, it’s completely open space so it was sort of chaotic. What I found the most fun was Snocross. It had structure and it was track-based. You could pull off some sweet jumps and turn tight corners. I feel if Zordix AB made this part of the game a priority instead of trying to spread themselves thin by having other racing modes, this game would’ve been more solid. Lastly was Freedom League, which again, I don’t understand why there were so many options, but this just has maps and racing options from the previous two. Maybe to mix things up?

There are plenty of ways to catch air and pull off some pretty cool tricks, which surprisingly, the animations were pretty decent looking. Building up your boost is very important to pull off certain tricks when approaching ramps. You can build up boost by doing stunts, but over time it naturally builds itself up. When you start a race (like most arcade style racers) if you hit the gas at the right time, you can take off with a blast and have a full boost gauge that you can use to your advantage. I found races hard to enjoy at times because as soon as you got boost and tried to use it, it was as if AI got boost too and would always be right behind. Cheap.... However, sometimes it was completely pointless to use boost and simply trying your best while avoiding jumps and tricks was the easiest way to win.

I’ll be honest, I finished the game in under 5 hours with all golds. Don’t expect some extravagant open-world snowmobile racer that’s going to take you all over the world. Granted you have a few local to choose from such as: Scandinavia, the Rocky Mountains, the Swiss Alps and a few others. There were a few options that I spend a little time on which was Leisure mode, which takes you to different areas (as mentioned above) and basically driving around GTA-style, gathering random collectables, (which I had no idea what the hell happened when you collected them all, given there was no instructions) and doing tricks. This kind of reminded me of Motocross Madness which allowed me to waste a few mindless hours on, but that’s about it.

There were several bugs in the game that cannot go ignored, such as collisions not corresponding to the speed that you’re going so you would often get knocked off your snowmobile on the slightest touch from an opponent. Things such as not having proper track placement when you would respawn and often times simply not knowing what was in bounds and what was out.   

The game offers local multiplayer and online multiplayer to which was kind of boring and hardly competitive. The servers were pretty decent, which doesn’t say much considering maybe a few thousand were playing online at the time. Leaderboards are also a welcome addition that will allow you to measure up to the competition when trying to compete for times, but where’s the excitement in that?

Overall, the game was pretty mediocre. This isn’t an arcade game like back in the day that you would remember, but seems lack identity and exhilaration. There was too much going on and ultimately, I feel like the developers were trying to rush the game. At a price point of $19.99, it isn’t a game I can confidently say is worth the money. That’s sad considering how hard developers work and the dedication that’s needed to create a game. It feels unfinished. Maybe adding a little more content, a tutorial and snowmobile upgrade options would make it a more convincible buy. I could see myself buying the game for $9.99 in its current state, but until then, I’d rather pull out my old PlayStaion 3 and play Midway Arcade Classics for that old arcade nostalgia. 

Tao Dawkins, NoobFeed
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