In order to better appeal to the scooter demographic, Razor Freestyle Scooter actually has a plot, although it has little effect on the outcome of the game, except for rationalizing the unlocking of new characters. Norton, a badly programmed robot, has gone on a rampage and taken Daryl, Hector and Brittany and four others from the Razor Crew. It’s up to Chad and Ami to make their way from sky fortress to sky fortress before being able to free a member of their crew that's then used to unlock another character.

Modeled after Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Razor Freestyle Scooter emulates Neversoft’s addictive game in terms of control – but this is a good thing. Pressing X jumps the character into the air, and from there, holding circle (holdable trick) and a direction on the d-pad, square (non-holdable trick) and a direction will start a trick. The key to amassing a massive amount of points it linking together the tricks, but there has to be a stricken balance; the longer you hold a single trick in the air, the more points the trick will allow. What happens, however, is that every time that trick is used, the point value for it decreases, so the game encourages that you constantly mix up what tricks you use. Razor Freestyle Scooter seems to be a bit more lenient on allowing you to land most tricks no matter how many you link, since I was able to freely button mash and come away with positive results many times.

Overall, there’s not much to complain about in the control department; Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater’s scheme was perfect, and while Razor Freestyle Scooter is a copy, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work well for the game. The one problem I had was when pulling off tricks in a bowl or between two ramps, I would often let go of X to initiate a jump, and instead of leaping straight up, my character and scooter would jettison off the ramp into another part of the level.

While it is the gameplay that really counts in any game, the music can add much to the atmosphere and mood of the game, and Razor Freestyle Scooter unfortuantely skimps a bit in this area. The entire soundtrack is comprised of punk bands, and while this in itself is fine, all the bands chosen were obviously picked because it didn’t cost much to license their tracks. The result is an assortment of music that sounds almost the same every time. There are a few standouts (such as Sloppy Meat Eaters’ “Brand New Kind Of”), but as a whole, Razor Freestyle Scooter’s music is entirely forgettable. Considering the age group that the title is aimed at, it would seem to have made more sense to pull together more mainstream music (I can just imagine scootering around to Britney Spears’ “Stronger” – classic!), but since the title is selling at $20, the slightly lower production values likely prohibited anything too high profile.

Razor Freestyle Scooter is a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to visuals, since the engine doesn’t seem to be anything special, but it won’t make your eyes bleed, either. The scootering environments have plenty of places for characters to grind and pull tricks off, though a jolt of complexity into their design would have been a welcome addition. The levels toward the end of the game do get more interesting, but are designed in a fashion where it feels more like a platform game using a scooter, since you’re simply following paths of cables and pipes that have been laid out. Otherwise, the areas are of the fairly generic fair, ranging from a schoolyard to a skate park tailored to scooters. The game’s frame rate is ample all the time; I never noticed a time where it became a noticeable annoyance, and the graphics on a whole are good enough to not hider the game's entertainment value.

As much of “cash in” as Crave’s Razor Freestyle Scooter might be, I can’t help but enjoy it. There have been a million skateboarding titles on the market in the past year; only one or two were really worth playing. Razor Freestyle Scooter’s gameplay is completely off the wall fun, and despite its quirky premise, kept me coming back for more time and time again. Worth checking out if you’re bored of all the extreme sports titles flooding the market.