Now here’s a title that I honestly never expected I’d be raving to you about. Ubisoft’s Shaun White Snowboarding for the Nintendo Wii is honestly one of the most fun titles we played all day today. Sure, the concept is rooted in the Wii Fit minigame original, but thankfully this title goes well beyond the functionality of that. Earlier today while meeting with Ubisoft, we were given the opportunity to test drive it for ourselves… so we kicked off our shoes and stepped onto the Wii balance board—and here’s what we came away with.
Don’t get me wrong, Shaun White isn’t the most revolutionary game at the show or anything like that, but what it does, it does well. I couldn’t help but feel while playing that the game resembles less of an SSX-like experience and instead more closely parallels Nintendo’s top-rated but oft-forgotten 1080 Snowboarding for the Nintendo 64. And that’s a good thing, because Nintendo’s original title featured the sort of polish that is customary of a good Nintendo product. It was layered with complexity, but without the weight of an overbearing control scheme… and that made it lots of fun to pick up and play, but a challenge to master.
Shaun White Snowboarding, upon first impressions (we spent around a half an hour with it), seems to be similar in that regard. I did do some downhill slaloming in my play session, and that was fun… but after getting the hang of the control scheme (and somehow reining in control of my center of balance, something that I’m notoriously bad at… at least according to the narcissistic lashings of my Wii Fit trainer), I really started enjoying myself, and so it was time to tackle the half-pipe.
But before I get into all of that, let me first briefly traverse the basic control scheme. You stand on the Wii balance board so that it and your body are perpendicular to the television, thus simulating an actual snowboarding experience. Leaning forward, then, turns in one direction, while leaning backwards turns the opposite way. Leaning toward and away from the television also serves as a speed control, and it works fairly well. You can even jump by bending your knees and quickly rebounding (but remember, don’t jump off the Wii balance board in the process). While airborne, you can then perform tricks through the simple use of the A and B buttons (holding them down performs various grabs) in combination with additional leaning on the balance board (holding a button and leaning performs a flip or a rotation as well).
Now, let’s talk about the half-pipe. At first, the basic technique was a little tough to grasp. But before long, the practice of alternating directions in a zig-zag pattern through the valley felt pretty natural. Naturally, however, the tricks were the meat and potatoes of the experience, and they’re lots of fun to pull off on the ‘pipe (even if the game is rather forgiving—though that’s probably a good thing). My first go I only got around 1,500 points, but after that, I scored in the 6,000s, and the third time, I was all the way up near 13K—not bad, says the developer on hand, who informs me that I’m actually the highest scorer of the day so far. He probably tells that to all the media guys.
Wrapping up, I also asked the Ubisoft devs how many slopes we can expect in the final version. The answer can quickly, “20”. So that’s positive. The game itself looks to be quite tailored to the Wii’s talents, making this one to watch as we approach the release date of Holiday 2008.
