If you ask someone to name a great snowboarding game from the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube generation, the only one that should come to mind for any normal person will have ‘SSX’ somewhere in the title. Anyone who’s first response is Dark Summit, published by THQ in 2001, isn’t in full possession of his faculties. Evidence for this claim: Dark Summit was the first game I thought of when asked this question, and that’s why it’s part of “So Bad It’s Good” month here at RGM. I know I have a lot of work ahead of me convincing you loyal readers my hypothesis is correct, so hand me that shovel and I’ll start digging.

Dark Summit Title Screen

Putting Dark Summit in a genre is like trying to herd gerbils using nothing but a cow-shaped oven mitt: every time you think you’re getting somewhere, you, uh, realize you’re wearing a cow-shaped oven mitt? (note to self: fix analogy before posting). It’s a snowboarding title, which should instantly consign it to the status of a sports game in the racing genre. But it isn’t timed like the SSX series, so that removes the racing aspect, and while there is a multi-player mode available, it’s extremely limited in comparison to the stuff you’re doing in single-player and feels tacked on as an after-thought. Trust me, you’re not buying this for the 2-player split-screen action on offer. It’s semi-open-world in that it’s ultimately one giant mountain with multiple pathways down, but since you’re on a snowboard and the laws of gravity are in full effect, you can’t really free-roam like in GTA.

The law, however, requires you to free-form as often as possible.

The game delivers quests in the form of cell phone towers which send encrypted messages to your indestructible Nokia. Accepting a quest begins a mini-game scenario where you’re tasked with pulling off a number of moves within a time frame, winning a race against other skiers on the slopes, breaking things, jumping over stuff, finding bombs, and other tasks the snowboarding elite routinely undertake in their quest to shred more fine, white powder. Finishing quests successfully gets you money and lift points: cash lets you buy better snowboards and outfit yourself with cool new gear from the ski shop; lift points unlock starting positions higher up the mountain, which in turn give access to new areas and new quests. Also, while Naya starts with a limited number of fun tricks in her arsenal, there are another dozen or so she can learn. While not necessary to complete the game (none of your quests involve landing specific special tricks), they do add a nice variety and challenge to your repertoire. The trick collectibles look like big yellow spheres, and running over them adds a new one to your list, though it won’t tell you which specific trick you learned, so you’ll have to pause and check. Finally, playing through the game unlocks other ‘boarders with whom you can jazz up the slopes if you get tired of playing as Naya all the time, although Naya’s the only one who you can customize with new outfits and boards. Voila: there are your action and RPG aspects.

Our heroine!

Finally there’s the story which involves a military conspiracy, secret experiments, and contact with other life forms which are possibly extra-terrestrial in origin. Your job as Naya, the pony-tail-clad informant on the slopes, is to uncover enough evidence of wrong-doing and law-breaking that the snowboarding resistance can shut down the mountain and put an end to whatever horrible things are happening behind the scenes. You wanted adventure? Boom, you got it. Dark Summit is all of this and then some. Nothing with a design document as messy as this could possibly turn out good, and indeed, the game earned itself a score somewhere between 67 and 71 on Metacritic, depending on whether you’re playing the Xbox, GameCube, or PS2 version. Critical reviews were generally lukewarm at best, and downright hostile at worst. By no stretch of the imagination is Dark Summit a great game.

Security Chief O’Leary takes the security of his mountain seriously.

Nevertheless, I sank an embarrassingly enormous number of hours into playing it. I have no earthly justification for doing so beyond pointing to the game’s corny storyline and enormous diversity of missions which make it so damn fun to play. Whether you’re outrunning a self-triggered avalanche, performing a huge string of rail grinds, or weaving around the massive explosive mines that litter areas of the mountainside, Dark Summit takes itself seriously enough without making the cardinal sin of taking itself too seriously. By the time you reach the end-game, which has you travelling down a colossal alien half-pipe, knocking over decoy cows rigged with explosives, and high-jumping off a cliff formed by the spine and ribcage of a long-fossilized dinosaur, you’ve hit the pinnacle of Radical Entertainment’s drug-fueled coding orgy where it seems literally anything they could come up with wound up somewhere in the game.

Practicing some sweet grinds on this busted radio tower.

The wonder of it all is that Dark Summit didn’t bankrupt Radical Entertainment, but rather seemed to spur them on to even greater feats of ridiculousness. This is the same studio that brought us The Simpsons: Hit and Run in 2003, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction in 2005, Scarface: The World is Yours in 2006, and inFamous clone Prototype in 2009–clearly Radical Entertainment knows what they’re doing, since they’re still in business today. Don’t misunderstand: Dark Summit is not a “great” game by any stretch of the imagination. But that’s OK. It’s fun, it’s simple to pick up and play for a while, then put down to go do something else. So let’s give it up for Dark Summit, for being a game so bad…it’s good!

Unlike this trick, which is so bad it’s the precursor to a snapped spine.

Michael Crisman

In 1979, Michael Crisman was mauled by a radioactive Gorgar pinball machine. After the wounds healed, doctors discovered his DNA had been re-coded. No longer fully human, Michael requires regular infusions of video games in order to continue living among you. If you see him, he can see you. Make no sudden moves, but instead bribe him with old issues of computer and video game magazines or a mint-in-box copy of Dragon Warrior IV.


If he made you laugh, drop a tip in his jar at http://paypal.me/modernzorker


(If he didn't make you laugh, donate to cure his compulsion to bang keyboards by sending an absurdly huge amount of money to his tip jar instead. That'll show him!)