When this game was announced mid-last year, I got somewhat excited. I was lucky enough to be in Nagano, Japan back in 1998 for the Winter Olympics. I was also privileged to get the opportunity to watch Jonny Moseley win a gold medal in the freestyle mogul event. Therefore, the prospect of taking control of him in a videogame seemed like a great idea. The influx of snowboarding games is starting to get borderline ridiculous. A freestyle skiing game would definitely freshen up the winter scene, wouldn't it? Unfortunately, Mad Trix is nothing more than a bad snowboarding game disguised as a skiing game. The final product feels as if it were rushed to retail in order to take advantage of the Olympics. Perhaps a couple of more months would have sorted out some of the issues present.

The visual presentation is sub-par considering we are now into the second generation of PS2 titles. A lot of work is needed to generate the high end visuals we have come to expect. It is obvious little time was spent with Mad Trix. The landscapes feel claustrophobic and lack any depth needed to convey you are on some half decent run. Instead, you can end up bouncing off objects and get stuck in some cases. The skiers themselves look fine but the trick animations are nothing special. We are assuming that Mad Trix wanted to take the over-the-top approach and thereby showing animations similar to SSX Tricky. However, this is not the case. A lot of imagination could have gone into making the trick animations more interesting and enticing. The developers did nothing to take advantage of the PS2's more advanced visual features via lens flares or snow particle effects. Another issue is the speed of the game. While the visuals are not directly affected, the slow pace of the courses makes it seems as if you are in a dream sequence, rather than flying down a great run. The aural experience is the usual run of the mill tunes and sound effects that have been overplayed in extreme games as of late.

As with most extreme sports games, visuals are a nice addition to complement competent gameplay. Unfortunately the gameplay in Mad Trix is also faltered. To make these kind of games work you need to have control that is smooth and responsive, combined with an intricate trick system that is loaded with a variety of modes. In Mad Trix the control is rough and unresponsive when coupled with the sloppy graphics engine. As a result, we found ourselves swerving all over the place. Once we finally figured out to maintain some sense of control, the trick system was boring to say the least. For some reason the game focuses a lot on grinding. You can grind just about everything in the game easily. Once you are in a grind it is nearly impossible to fall off. While this might appeal to beginners, it just does not make sense for the veteran gamer. It would appear that most tricks score roughly the same amount of points. Taking risks in Mad Trix is not rewarded.

In the end Mad Trix may have some appeal to hardcore Moseley fans but for everyone else a weekend rental will suffice. We have a glimmer of hope that the developers will take another look at this possible franchise and give it the care and attention it deserves to crank out a worthy piece of software.