AXS

Genre: Sports (Snowboarding)

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: Max Interactive Studio

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Review:

AXS is a Snowboarding game released as an asset on the Unity Asset Store in 2021 as Snowboard Game Starter Pack, and brought to the Nintendo Switch as a low-effort asset flip in 2021. Given how very few games there are in this genre on the Nintendo Switch, that in and of itself is noteworthy… and since I make it a point to not say bad things about a game in its opening paragraph, that is about all I can say here.

Well, okay, there is one other good thing I can say about this game – the icon on the Nintendo Switch is really nice, promising a colorful, expressive interpretation of the sport. However, since I’m actually talking about this game’s icon, you’re undoubtedly reading into the fact that this is not the case. To its credit, AXS tries to have an interesting presentation – it uses cel-shaded 3D graphics to give it a more cartoony look. Unfortunately, with low-poly characters, a lack of textures, no lighting effects, and a lack of the sort of color the logo has, this cel-shading almost seems like it’s trying to wallpaper over the completely terrible look this game would have without it. And yet despite this simplicity, the game still has some nasty problems with pop-in.

Don’t expect the sound to do anything worthwhile here either – the game is devoid of music, and aside from the unconvincing sounds of your board scraping along the snow, the only other sounds of note here are a muted applause when you finish a level (often nowhere near anything resembling a finish line), or an unconvincing yelp from your boarder when they crash into an object.

These sorts of crashes frustratingly cause you to fail a level and need to restart, it should be noted. And it should also be noted that the only way to crash is to collide with an obstacle. No matter how you orient your board, you’ll never lose your footing, so I suppose you might as well spin away when in mid-air.

Ah yes, tricks. When it comes to tricks, spinning, rail grinds, wall rides, and jumping are all you’ll be doing. No board grabs, no flips, nothing like that. And a wall ride or a rail grind is just riding your board on a steep surface or a rail – there’s no skill involved here. And then there’s jumping… yeah, this game has no jump button. The only control you have over when you lift off the ground is if you pick up enough speed heading into an incline.

And that brings me to the basic controls here. You can turn, and you can brake. That’s it. What’s worse, turning is touchy, and if you turn too much, your board will reorient and act as if you’re not turning at all, meaning that the game will force you to fight your own instincts whenever you hit a sharp turn. Good luck with that.

Given all of those problems, it may not be any great surprise that this game doesn’t feature other boarders to compete with, no multiplayer to speak of, not even a leaderboard to compete with others with your course scores. Your only goals here are to get to the bottom of each course before a timer runs out, and score as many points as you can along the way. However, the former is easily done, and given how little variety there is in the way you can do stunts, the latter is dull and monotonous.

I had high hopes for AXS – the Nintendo Switch needs a great Snowboarding game, or at the very least a decent one. However, AXS is not that game. Only its well-designed logo and cel-shaded visuals are noteworthy here, and they seem to exist purely to hide the terrible game underneath. Don’t be fooled into buying this game – it’s an extreme disappointment.

tl;dr – AXS is a Snowboarding game with cel-shaded visuals, a cool-looking logo, and not much else going for it. Terrible controls, ugly pop-in, simple low-poly character models, and a slew of other problems make this game an extreme disappointment.

Grade: D

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