Midway's "Thunder" series has been hit or miss. After the excellent piece of work that was Hydro Thunder, we were hoping to see some more high-caliber games, equally as well designed. Unfortunately, it has been more or less downhill from there. Arctic Thunder was an OK game in the arcades, and has translated to a "slightly" better than OK game for the Xbox. Midway unfortunately neglected to realize what made Hydro such a great game to begin with; Great course designs and enjoyable gameplay. The issues that take away from the game being "fun", like mentioned earlier, are still present. The characters are generic and uninteresting, the courses are mostly forgettable and not as cleverly designed or eye-catching as Hydro Thunder's, and the weapons really add nothing to the game. If Arctic Thunder were more focused on racing, and less dependant on collecting and firing as many power-ups as possible, then maybe this would not be an issue. The ability to upgrade your sleds and drivers is a nice touch; as are the various multiplayer play modes, but they just don't do enough to improve upon the fundamental problems found in the game.

The Xbox version IS the arcade game, except with a few home-only modes and features. The PlayStation 2 version suffered from some annoying drops in framerate, which not only affected the control but also made it somewhat of an eyesore at times. Arctic Thunder for the Xbox, on the other hand is relatively good looking, locked at a solid 60 fps, and has no such control problems. The polygonal riders and snowmobiles are sparse when it comes to polys, but the environments are rather large and special effects, always plentiful. The textures don't really compare to those found in other Xbox games, but like noted above, they look just like those in the original arcade version. There are always a ton of sound effects and voices going on thanks to the never-ending barrage of weaponry, and the music is actually not half bad. Mostly, the audio is average at best.

The multiplayer modes are probably the game's best feature. The "Mario Kart" style battle modes are somewhat interesting, but the game is really still more about racing then playing tag in an enclosed arena. In the standard racing modes, the ability to play against a full pack of CPU opponents, along with a few friends, is definitely great fun. I am always a sucker for games that have a "co-op" style of racing mode. Depending on the game, only being able to race one-on-one grows boring real quickly.

The Xbox will have no shortage or arcade style racing titles, that's for sure. If you are a fan of the arcade version or just want a decent multiplayer arcade racer, the Xbox version is as close as the arcade original as you will get. Overall, Arctic Thunder is just average at best.