Crayola Scoot

Genre: Sports (“Extreme”)

Players: 1-4 Competitive / Team (Local Splitscreen)

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Review:

Crayola Scoot is an Extreme Sports game with personal scooters in the vein of Tony Hawk, in a gaming landscape where that sort of game is now an extreme rarity. I wanted a new game like this, needed a new game like this… but as much as I really wanted to like Crayola Scoot, I just… couldn’t.

To be clear, I wasn’t expecting a crayon-licensed game to be the second coming of Tony Hawk. Heck, I would have been just fine with something on par with Disney Skate Adventures or Dave Mirra BMX. And in all fairness, Crayola Scoot does manage to do a few things that are pretty unique and original, but it’s also lacking something vital to the experience as well.

What Crayola Scoot does right is it presents a bright, clean, cartoony presentation with cel-shaded graphics, colorful levels and characters, and a smooth framerate.

Also, it brings an interesting premise – you’re not just rolling around doing tricks, you’re also splashing color on the level whenever you do a trick, leaving a colorful mess in your wake much like the Splatoon games. And many of the various game modes present in Crayola Scoot build on this, often making the game less about doing tricks, and more about spreading your color of paint.

I think the game modes here could have used some work, as not all of them succeed as well as I’d like, but my real gripe with the game is the controls. The game makes use of a wonky control setup that has you using the right control stick to jump, and with the all-important “boost” command tied to the face buttons, it leaves this game as a frustrating mess to try to play. Since you can’t re-map the button layout, if you don’t like it, you’re out of luck.

One of the reasons I loved the Tony Hawk games so much was that the controls were so natural that you could just focus on the challenge of the game, and Crayola Scoot complicates that challenge by adding in the color/painting thing, and then needlessly complicates the controls. While I appreciate it trying something new and different, for a game apparently aimed at children, Crayola Scoot is a colorful experiment that’s better-suited to the trash than the refrigerator.

tl;dr – Crayola Scoot is an Extreme Sports scooter game that looks great and uses a fun, interesting color-splashing mechanic straight out of the Splatoon games. Unfortunately, the controls are terrible, and it kills the fun of the entire experience.

Grade: C-

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