Shows potential, but sadly a handful of minor flaws give the game an unpolished / rushed feel.
My first impression was that this was going to be another edgy adrenaline-fueled skiing/snowboarding game like SSX, sans the snowboards. And, frankly, I wasn't that far off the mark. For a relatively unknown game by an obscure publisher, Freak Out: Extreme Freeride has a very nice-looking interface--with stereotypical hand-drawn/grunge-styled font & graphics, lively animated menus, and energetic punk rock music playing in the background to complete the rebellious in-your-face attitude that we expect from extreme sports games. Aesthetically, the game's menu interface is very polished, even if they do seem to be mimicking SSX On Tour's graphic style.
However, I immediately noticed something was terribly awry with this SSX OT clone. First off, there was a very noticeable delay when switching between different items in the main menu, as if the game had to reload the individual menu animations each time you changed the selection. This made navigating the menu system slow and frustrating, but whatever... Ignoring this minor glitch, I proceeded to create my profile and select my skier. There was maybe ~6 skiers to choose from, I think 3 guys and 3 girls. But as I tried to check out each skier, that is when the overall competence of the developers came into serious question. Each skier model took about 15-20 seconds to load. Now, these skier models weren't bad looking, but they weren't anything special either. I'm sure I've seen far more detailed character selection screens, and none came close to this kind of loading time. Having already spent about 5-6 minutes just navigating the menus frustratingly trying to get to the core gameplay, I randomly chose whatever male skier I already had selected and began skiing.
Surprisingly, the actual course did not take all that long to load. Even more surprisingly, the graphics and gameplay weren't all that bad either. For an obscure low-budget title, the game itself actually seemed half-way decent at first glance. The slopes were realistically contoured and give players plenty of opportunities to do jumps/grabs/rails and other assorted tricks. The game moved at a reasonable pace, and while the scenery is pretty bland--you are on a snow-covered mountain, after all--there were plenty of trees, rocks, logs, rails, etc. to keep it interesting. By no means is it nearly as graphically polished as SSX OT, but it's very respectable for a low-budget equivalent. The skier even leaves a realistic trail in the snow, and the controls and game physics are pretty well tuned.
There are various challenges for each slope, and succeeding in these challenges unlocks more features and other places to ski, much like other similar titles. There isn't really any innovation here, but the game does have its own distinct feel. After deciding to leave the horrendous menu system behind and just put in some time on the slopes, I began to see that though this game was by no means a hidden gem in PSP gaming, nor was it a complete dud. Instead, Freak Out: Extreme Freeride is a game full of contradictions.
On the one hand, the game's interface looks (deceptively) polished and inviting, the controls and physics feel smooth and well-tuned, and the core gameplay shows huge potential for a budget title. But at the same time, the menu system is plagued with completely unacceptable load times, the camera angle is fixed in an awkward position (pointing down too steeply to see your peripheral landscape); the scenery decorations, such as trees and rocks/logs lack detail, betraying the game's low-budget origins; and there are minor level design flaws, such as large rocks that players can get pinned behind which are difficult to get out of.
It seems like the developers do have some talent, and the game possesses all the major ingredients to create a good skiing game, but sloppy coding and a lot of minor annoyances hold the game back. I understand that this is a low-budget title, but it still feels rushed. For instance, on the first mountain, there's a helicopter resting at the top that has blurred rotor blades that don't actually spin--why not go the extra distance to make them actually spin, or just let them be fully at rest? It's just minor things like that which ruin this game--but there are A LOT of them. Also, the pop-punk soundtrack does get quite annoying, further adding to the uncool image that skiing has (maybe license better music next time?), but that's another rant for another day...