Shaun White Snowboarding

Forget skill, go fetch me that coin.

Posted 4 years ago By - Zach R.

When it comes to snowboarding, Shaun White is an undeniable talent. Ubisoft Montreal: also an undeniable talent in the world of gaming. Put the two together, and you think it’d be a lock for the best snowboarding game in years. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. That’s not to say that Shaun White Snowboarding isn’t good. It’s got a slick control scheme, some amazing visuals and some solid gameplay. However, it takes more than solid to bring home the gold, as any athlete can tell you. A handful of issues and some questionable design choices keep back what is essentially a good snowboarding title, but one that can’t compete with some of the best.

Gameplay

Shaun White is looking for the next big thing in boarding, and after watching your moves on the mountain for a short time, he’s convinced you’re it. Or at least, you could be with some training. Now, Shaun’s willing to train you, but before taking you on, you’re going to have to perform a fetch quest or two in order to prove yourself. Sorry, what? No, that’s not a mistake. Shaun doesn’t want to test your skills by actually watching you board...he wants you to fetch him some coins that can be found throughout the games four different mountains. Not just one time, either. Each time you collect a set of twelve coins, he’ll teach you what the game dubs "Focus". These equate to a bunch of special moves, like super speed, or the ability to blow through walls of ice. In order to learn new Focus moves, you’re going to need to collect coins each and every time. Essentially, this seems like a waste of time and simply a way to extend gameplay rather than an honest to goodness way to prove that you’re a pro. It just feels out of place in a game that’s supposed to be about snowboarding, not fetch-quests.

Mind you, that’s not all you can do in the game. There are, of course, competitions that you can compete in, such as Races, Freestyle, and Big Air. These are littered throughout the four vast mountains available to you in the game. Each competition has 4 medals that you can aspire to, based on your total score. While the competitions and tasks themselves aren’t all that engaging and have certainly been done better elsewhere, the challenge involved in attaining all four medals is likely enough to keep most glued to their seats for a few hours, anyway. The main problem here is that progression isn’t decided by how well you do in these competitions, though. It’s decided by the coins that I mentioned earlier, so the only incentive to play these is to prove yourself to...yourself, really.


Well, that’s if you choose to play solo. This leads me to the best feature in the whole game, the online component. This is actually a great setup here, and hitting the slopes with some friends is easy as pie. What’s so great about it? Well, the game is definitely more interesting when played with others. You can compete against them, or just ride around the mountain throwing snowballs at them if you want. Either way, it brings some much needed life to the party as the storyline isn’t compelling enough to make you want to do, well...anything. It seems like most of the focus went into SWS being an online game anyway, as there are a couple of challenges, (the more fun ones, at that), that are online only. The one complaint I have is that you can’t invite someone to a particular challenge if they haven’t already unlocked it themselves. Still, it’s a minor gripe, and the online portion just feels more complete and fulfilling than the single player in this game.

Ubisoft Montreal has put in other cool features aside from the online, though. The Quick Menu feature lets you do a few things. By pressing on the D-pad in any direction you can bring up the option to change the music, place a marker so you don’t have to trudge all the way up the mountain if you mis-time your jump, place an online bet, or start up a chat session. It’s a neat feature and is way more convenient than pausing the game and working through the menu system there. There’s also a video editor so you can upload some of your sweetest tricks into cyber-space. It’s a fairly simple system, but it works as it’s intended to, and is a welcome addition to the game.

So how does the game control? If you’re familiar with EA’s Skate, SWS is very much the same beast. You use the triggers to jump and tweak your moves, while the analog sticks are used to control your spins and grabs. The controls in general feel pretty tight, and work as they should. For fans of SSX or other snowboarding titles out there, though, be warned. This game focuses on realism, so you won’t be pulling off these incredibly insane tricks all the time. As a matter of fact, there’s not much variety to the moves that you can pull off. That’s not to say that this is a bad thing, but when you spend your time collecting giant coins or blasting through walls of ice, realism pretty much goes out the window, doesn’t it? Adding a few tweaks to the trick system definitely couldn’t have hurt the game at all, but I respect what they were going for here.

Graphics & Sound

The visuals in this game are spectacular. This is by far the prettiest snowboarding game released yet. Character models look great, and the mountains themselves are breath-taking. One great thing about the way the game looks, is that you never have the distance blur that you’d find in most games. You can literally spot a tree at the bottom of the mountain from the top, and board your way down there, and the clarity isn’t lost. However, there’s very little difference in many of the mountains, when it comes down to it. There’s very little to distinguish each mountain from the others. Character animations look sweet, but wipe-outs are pretty stiff looking.


The camera is another problem. It automatically shifts focus when an avalanche hits, or you take your board off. This is just a pain when you’re in the middle of doing an awesome trick or about to go for a big jump and the camera shifts from an in-tight view to an extremely far off view as the result of an avalanche. When you take off your board, the camera doesn’t make things easy for you at all, as you’ll constantly have to adjust it while trying to get to your planned destination. Good thing those checkpoint markers are there, as climbing up the mountain with this camera just plain sucks.

On the audio side of things, you’ve got a varied soundtrack and some uneven voice-acting. The soundtrack has a little something for everyone, from Run DMC to the Mooney Suzuki. It’s nice having this much variety, though there are quite a few tracks that don’t really fit with the flow of the game. Thank goodness for that quick menu feature, huh? Shaun’s no actor, so I can’t really fault him for providing some weak voice-overs, but the rest of the cast ranges from terrible, to bad. Wow, the spaced-out stoner announcer? Never heard that one before. Chances are, if you bought a snowboarding game though, you aren’t in it for the voice-acting.

Value

As a single player offering, there isn’t much to SWS that will keep many coming back for more. Collecting coins and competing in events will occupy most for a few hours, but in the long run, it’s the multiplayer aspects of the game that will keep people coming back for more.


Conclusion

If you’ve been just craving a snowboarding game for a while now, SWS is worth a shot, but only because it’s the only gig in town. It’s not a bad title, by any means, but it lacks what made games like SSX and Amped so great, which is a focus on the sport itself.

4 days ago :: (XBLA) Sacred Citadel
6 days ago :: Injustice: Gods Among Us
6 days ago :: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14
1 week ago :: BioShock Infinite
3 weeks ago :: Gears of War Judgment
1 month ago :: (Kinect) The Hip Hop Dance Experience
1 month ago :: Tomb Raider
1 month ago :: Crysis 3
2 months ago :: DmC Devil May Cry
2 months ago :: (XBLA) Serious Sam Double D XXL