Shaun White Snowboarding: Hands-on Preview
by Chelsea Thompson on October 22, 2008 at 11:39 pm
With all of the first-person shooters flooding the market this coming holiday season, Shaun White Snowboarding offers a different sort of entertainment. With help from Olympic Gold Medalist and eight-time X Games Gold Medalist Shaun White, will this game be one that satisfies both hardcore gamers and snowboarding enthusiasts? Hit the jump for my hands-on impressions.
I was lucky enough to be previewing the Target version of Shaun White Snowboarding for 360 and Wii. Extras include a Target mountain with five extra trails and an open lodge area for your character to mingle with others. This version claims to have 20% more content than the regular version of the game but costs about $5 more. A pretty good bargain if you ask me. Besides the Target Mountain, there are four other locations: Alaska, Park City, Europe (Alps), and Japan. Fully customizable characters were only available in the 360 version (and I think it’s safe to assume this feature will be in the PS3 version as well).
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip (Wii)
The first version I got to play of the game was the Wii version. After taking off my shoes, I asked if the board might have trouble picking up my weight shifts, since I am in fact a little girl. Trent Ward, the creative director of the game, explained that the Wii Balance board can be calibrated according to your weight. Apparently when they thought they had the controls down pat, someone brought their kid in to test the game and the board didn’t register the weight properly. Whoops.
The levels I got to play were on the Target Mountain. You wouldn’t know it from looking at the level — ads are surprisingly subtle. The controls were better than the average Wii game, and with good reason. Ward told me that the development team was split into two groups with one working on Wii remote controls and the other working on Balance Board controls. This shows in the gameplay as both methods of controlling the character feel pretty tight, and neither feels like a tacked-on extra.
The Balance Board controls are good in essence, but from what I played, very hard to master. If you are facing the right with the Balance Board perpendicular to the TV (as I was) leaning on your toes turns to the right, leaning on your heels turns to the left, and throwing your weight on the board will make the character jump. Leaning during a jump will rotate your character, and the A and B buttons on the Wii remote allow you to do tricks.
The problem with the controls is that you can’t use the board like a real snowboard. Ward noticed I had some difficulty and advised me to try to keep from turning my hips towards the TV. “People who really snowboard have the same problem when they start playing,” he commented sympathetically.
I can see how the controls in the game are not easy to pick up at first, which might be a little frustrating for the Wii’s target audience (no pun intended). However, even though I didn’t have a mastery of the controls, I still found myself having a lot of fun. At no point did I get stuck anywhere on the map or run into anything that broke the flow of game.
The gameplay itself is pretty straightforward. While sliding down the trail you can stop off at a floating backpack to pick up a challenge, or you can complete some of the level goals. Also included are somewhat environmentally-friendly goals where you collect pieces of trash around the mountain, or collect crown icons to gain respect.
One particularly unique aspect of the game is your camera person. As you make friends in the game, you can ask them to wield the camera for you as you hit the slopes. Each person will shout out different types of encouragement (or call you out when you suck) and each have different abilities that are unleashed when your tricks impress them.
The multiplayer in this version is a bit limited since it requires all of your friends to be in the same room. This has become a trademark for the Wii, so it’s not terribly surprising. My one worry is trying to fit four people and Balance Boards in one room without everyone falling all over each other (or just pushing your friend off so you can win).
Shaun White Snowboarding (Xbox 360)
The first thing I noticed about this version is that it has some gorgeous graphics. I won’t go into much detail here simply because there is a high standard for how our current-gen systems look, and this game certainly meets it. For a game that’s primarily filled with snow, it manages to fit a surprising amount of color and variety into the multitude of mountain trails.
The second cool thing I noticed about the game was the loading screen. It may seem like something small and trivial, but you can actually mess around in an infinite halfpipe while the game is loading. Hooray for making loading screens less tedious!
The game uses the Scimitar Engine, as seen in Assassin’s Creed and the upcoming Prince of Persia title. The physics in the game aren’t realistic, of course, but are also not as ridiculous as the Tony Hawk spend-three-hours-in-mid-air-type physics. It balances enough fantasy to be fun with enough realism to not feel ridiculous.
The controls are fairly simple, with R-trigger to jump and the right analog stick for various tricks. Jumping near a rail will automatically allow you to grind, etc., etc. Nothing really new in that department. There is more of a sense of speed in this version as well — the game is set up so that if you hit anything, you’ll continue to move forward (whether you’re on the board or not). This saves the annoyance of having to gain back all of the momentum you lost and also improves the overall flow of the game.
There are, however, lots of interesting little features present. You can set markers any place on the slope with a D-pad menu, which you can warp back to. From the D-pad menu you can also fiddle with the music (which happens to be a pretty cool collection of some of Shaun’s favorite tunes). You can press the B-button to scoop up snowballs and launch them at other random snowboarders, whose reaction time will depend on the NPC’s skill level (novices you can escape from pretty easily, but experts will almost instantly send one right back at you). There are actually races where this is an important part of gameplay, and it adds some extra fun to the multiplayer.
Speaking of multiplayer, the game gives you a good, wide variety of options. I think this is one of the coolest parts of the game actually. Online multiplayer can handle up to 16 players per map. You can hit the slopes and do your own thing, or you can stop at one of the floating challenger backpacks and invite friends to join in. There’s also a pretty cool option where you can pretty much say to your friend, “I bet you $50 I can get a higher score on this challenge than you.” You and your friend place your bets, run the course, and whoever gets the highest score wins the money. It’s a fun option that lends the game a bit of (slightly illegal) realism.
When I was there I didn’t really hear much about the game’s story. I know that as you progress through the game and earn a reputation, you get more friends and eventually are able to visit Shaun’s trailer on the mountain. To be completely honest, I have to say that the story really doesn’t interest me much. I find it much like asking a game like Madden or NBA Live to have a good plot. I’m sure you could do it but the real fun is in the gameplay.
Overall, I had a very positive experience with Shaun White Snowboarding. It has a ton of potential, and hopefully it can fill the void in snowboarding entertainment until the next SSX game is released.
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1 Comment » |
on November 11, 2008 10:33 pm
I found what you said interesting. i am helping promote this game for Ubisoft, And I have been playing it for a while. There is a few things in there that you mentioned that I over-looked. An experienced gamer like you has some expert perspective on games. I will try to notice some of the pointers you mentioned next time I play the game.