Hitting the Slopes
Before getting to the review, I’d like to point out that we received the Target (as in the retail store) Limited Edition version of this game. The Target edition features a new mountain, more challenges, character models, jibs, as well as a ‘unique storyline,’ and ‘target chalet.’ Other than that, the experience is essentially the same, and the price is just another $5 more.
That said, when you first start up Shaun White Snowboarding, you’ll be presented with a brief opening cutscene voiced by Shaun White. After this, you’re taken to the character creation screen. Choose your gender and then your board, bindings, jacket, pants, gloves, hat, goggles, backpack, and boots. Many of these items are locked at this point, but you’ll be able to unlock them later when you’ve earned enough respect during the single player mode. Also, these items cost money, and while you begin with $4000, this can evaporate very quickly depending on your tastes. Only the boards and bindings make an actual performance difference in the game, the clothing is just cosmetic. Boards are rated by a variety of stats including type, speed, amplitude, and forgiveness. Forgiveness is an important criteria in that it is a measure of how forgiving the board is to poor landings and grinding. Bindings on the other hand, don’t have criteria so much as just a text description; these descriptions are fairly generic, but sufficient enough along with the price of each, to know which sets are better than others.
So, once you’ve got your character all decked out, it’s time to ride. Anytime the game loads a mountain or park, it goes into a loading sequence that allows you to play during the load. NBA Live 06 on the Xbox 360 had a similar feature where you could shoot around in an empty gym while your game was loading in the background. I thought it was a cool idea then and it still is, although frankly I didn’t find any of the loading times in Shaun White Snowboarding to be all that long.
The back of the box describes the experience as ‘Total Freedom,’ and to a large degree, that’s correct. Players have the option to freely roam the mountainside with no time restrictions or limitations. There is however a ‘story’ or main quest that you will want to tackle. This quest begins after you get to the bottom of the City Park mountainside, which is the first course in the game. Upon arriving at the bottom of the City Park mountain, a cutscene loads. Shaun White tells you he’s impressed with your skill and passion (no matter how badly you did) and introduces his four friends. These include Alex the helicopter pilot and three other friends from Japan, “somewhere in Europe,” and Alaska, which coincide with the locations of the other parks, or mountains that you can visit. Shaun is interested in taking you under his wing, but wants you to do some things first to prove yourself.
Thus begins the main quest, which will lead you through exploring and competing in the various locales the game offers. A radar in the bottom right corner of your screen will show you the very general direction of certain items, like Challenges and important quest objects. I say very general direction because I thought the radar wasn’t very helpful; it’s extremely basic and doesn’t give any sense of topography or distance from the object. You simply have to keep working your way closer to the object on this radar and hope it pops up sooner than later. More than one time I was on a mountainside and was trying to run up part of the mountain to get to where I thought I would find a quest object only to find a large, steep hill that I couldn’t get around. I wish you could select objects that appear on your radar and instruct the game to give you more specific information on how to get to said object.
Anyway, as the campaign goes on, the competition gets tougher but you also earn the ability to use Focus Mode. Focus Mode is your gateway to using ‘powers’ or abilities that you also unlock as you go. These include the ability to increase your speed, jump higher, and bust through objects you couldn’t previously break through. This feature isn’t something I expected, but it’s pretty cool.
A moment earlier I mentioned Challenges and it’s definitely worth expanding upon that aspect of the game. Some Challenges require being online and challenging a friend or just anyone you can find, just FYI. That said, Challenges vary from time trials to races to half-pipe competitions and all things in between. Some challenges are all about pulling off a single, awesome trick. Others include jibfests (where points are only awarded for rail and box tricks), freestyle, airtime, collect (touch as many objects in a given time period), and precision riding (keeping inside the flags in a race against time). Different challenges have varying degrees of difficulty and by looking at the challenge object in the game world, you can see what level of difficulty that particular challenge is rated at.
Controls, Controls, You Must Learn Controls
Whether you’re going to go after every Challenge, complete the Quest, goof off, or invite and play with (against?) friends or others, you’ll want to have a firm understanding of the controls. Frankly, that goes for any game in this genre, be it a Tony Hawk, a Skate, an SSX, or heck, even my old favorite, TrickStyle. The in game tutorial will help out a lot, but I’d also recommend taking a look at the detailed manual that is well written with bits of humor and lots of pictures and control tables to explain each function. Of course, nothing will help your abilities and comfort with the controls more than practice, but these aids were a tremendous help to me in getting started.
The controls, I soon found, aren’t too bad. I found the two most important things for me was being ready to stabilize a landing with the leftstick and to be very careful with using the right trigger (RT) – RT makes you jump, but if you’re just on the ground and not going off a ramp, or near a rail or something to grind on, chances are you’ll do a halfway forwards flip right into the snow. Other than that, catching air and doing some cool tricks and landing wasn’t that hard as long as I paid attention to what board I was using and how much time I had to get myself ready to land. Actually in some ways I almost think I got away with a few front flips and other tough landings I shouldn’t have, but that really didn’t bother me because obviously landing is more fun than wiping out any day.
Closing Thoughts
Shaun White Snowboarding isn’t completely about snow boarding, you can also take your bindings off and run around on foot if you’d like. There isn’t a whole lot to do in this mode, but you can throw snowballs at the NPCs running about and that is kind of fun. A built in video editor allows you to edit your highlights to share, too. I also liked how easy it was to invite a friend to play – you can load up any park, play, and then at anytime invite someone to join you. You can also kick whomever at your convenience too.
Graphically, Shaun White Snowboarding isn’t bad. The character models seemed a little flimsy and, at least in the cutscenes, kind of rigid looking. I had a few minor clipping problems, and the textures are pretty bare, but the framerate stays smooth, probably the most important point. The soundtrack includes a variety of artists ranging from Bob Dylan, Audioslave, Kasabian, Run DMC, and Modest Mouse. I didn’t care for much of the soundtrack, but it’s easy enough to skip tracks with a press of the D-pad. Other sounds in game were sufficient, but not outstanding.
Ultimately, I found Shaun White Snowboarding to be fun for a few hours, but my enjoyment eventually fizzled out. It’s just that after a few hours you’ve really seen just about all that there is to see in the game. I personally was never really interested in mastering all of the Challenges or unlocking all of the boards and clothes, so I admittedly lost some replay value due to that. However, I think that for a lot gamers that aren’t either fans of Shaun White or of snowboarding, a weekend or three day rental will likely suffice. Still, fans of the Tony Hawk, Skate, 1080, and SSX series’ should definitely give Shaun White Snowboarding a look.