Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip Updated Hands-On

While Ubisoft is bringing its upcoming extreme sports game Shaun White Snowboarding to practically every available platform this winter, the Wii version of the game might just be the best of the bunch. During the past week, we've spent some time with the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of the game, but we saved the Nintendo Wii version for last. It's a good thing, too, because as promising as the other versions look, it's Road Trip that we're anticipating the most.

Unlike the more open-ended versions of Shaun White on the 360 and PS3, Road Trip is a story-driven adventure. It has you taking up with a bunch of snowboarders as they look to hook up with the red-haired Olympic gold medalist on the slopes somewhere in the world. The adventure will take them all over the globe as they look to track Shaun down. In order to beat the game, you'll need to conquer mountains in Canada, Chile, and the Swiss Alps, among several other locales.

The game starts you off in the Great White North of Canada and serves as a tutorial to get you used to the menu system, as well as the game's controls. In Road Trip, you need to choose two riders for every event you enter--a rider and a cameraman. Different characters have different attributes; one is quicker on the slopes, while another might be better at jumps. In addition, the cameraman you choose will also offer you a bonus to a certain attribute. As you gain friends, you'll want to customize your two-man crew to give you the best bonuses for a particular challenge.

Based on our time with the game, Road Trip's controls seem to be the highlight of the entire package. You can play the game with just the Wii Remote or with the remote in combination with the Wii Balance Board. When playing with just the remote, you jump by flicking the remote up and pull tricks by twisting then turning the remote while your boarder is in midair. When on the ground, you turn your character by twisting the remote left or right and can tuck for extra speed by pointing the tip of the Wii Remote downward.

Players who have some snowboarding experience will likely prefer the Wii Balance Board control scheme because the Balance Board seems to do a good job of simulating what it's like to be on a real snowboard. After calibrating the board--there are three sensitivity levels to choose from--you hit the mountain and steer your rider just like you would steer yourself on the slopes. To carve left or right, you simply lean backward or forward on the board. To tuck your rider for a boost of speed, you lean forward on the board; to come to an abrupt stop, you lean back. Practically anything you do on the board is controlled with your feet in this control scheme. To flip in the air, you lean forward or backward in the air; to spin, you just lean left or right. The buttons on the Wii Remote are merely used as modifiers for grabs or to initiate your bonus power that you earn as you make your way down the mountain.

While Road Trip is more plot-driven than the 360 or PS3 versions, both games still revolve around the varied challenges you'll find in the game. In Road Trip, there's no element of free roaming (at least, not that we've seen); instead, you'll be hopping from one challenge to the next. Challenge types in Road Trip include slalom races, trick or jibbing events, and head-to-head races against AI opponents. Beating challenges will earn you tickets to enter new events, and after completing a certain number of events at one location, you'll be able to move on to the next locale in the game. While Road Trip doesn't have the open-world feel of its counterparts on the 360 and PS3, there is some decent variety to the mountains themselves. For example, while Canada is a pretty straightforward, the second mountain, Chile, is a bit more visually interesting. It is perfect for jumping off or jibbing on its dangerous-looking rock ledges, which jut out from the snow.

The cartoon graphics of Road Trip are considerably different from the more realistic visuals found in the other versions of Shaun White, but they are effective nonetheless. As evidenced by the cutscenes that move the story forward, all of the characters in the game have distinctive personalities and the character design goes a long way in establishing those personalities. The trail design for the challenges looks to be pretty limited--we didn't find much in the way of shortcuts or secrets, but the trade-off for that is a nice sense of speed that we didn't see in the other versions of Shaun White.

Road Trip might not boast the huge levels or impressive textures of the other versions, but its fun character animations and smooth snowboarding feel has us excited to see how the final game ends up. We're especially curious to see how the cooperative split-screen play (for up to four riders) turns out. Look for more on the game in the coming weeks as we approach its November 16 release.