Graphics: 7 Gameplay: 8 Sound: 7 Value: 7 Reviewer's Tilt: 9 7.6 A sno
Gameplay: 8
Sound: 7
Value: 7
Reviewer's Tilt: 9
7.6
Disclaimer: I based my score on Gamespot's old-school rating system, therefore I'm not gonna throw around random 9's and 10's where they aren't due. I've also only played X amount of hours because I'm slowly growing out of my overzealous gaming years. Having said that, I HAVE played this game for a solid amount of hours and love it almost every step of the way for what it's meant to be.
I also played Shaun White Snowboarding a long time ago. I don't remember a lot of it but I do remember parts. To be fair it had good features which I believe should be genre requisites (those include: sitting on the ski lift all the way to the end, being able to look around; being able to skip sitting on the lift; jumping off the ski lift at any point; unstrapping from your board anywhere; snowballs) but just didn't live up to what I hoped for in terms of realism.
In a nutshell, I returned Shaun White soon after I got it. I kept Stoked.
Now onto business...
BASICS:
The game doesn't set you up with any kind or ridiculous story or back-drop or direct end-game goals from the beginning. All it does is force you into several quick tutorials, then leaves you to explore the vastness of 3 (out of 5 total) mountains to slowly rack up "Fame Points" and eventually build up your, well, fame. That's the goal here, getting famous and sponsered which to me (albeit not everyone), is enough of a reason to go about enjoying my game. I always saw blatant storylines as pointless in extreme sports games.
What many people don't realize is that this game is set in what's called backcountry which is defined (by the reference guide handily included with the game) as: natural terrain well outside of the groomed runs and lifts of a resort destination. (The rest of it's definitions are just as accurate as well) That's what this game is, plain and simple. Don't expect Tony Hawk on snow with various colored rails and kickers placed every so-and-so feet down the trail from you. The trail is what you make it out to be...
Having this game exclusively set in the backcountry of 5 well-known mountains allows it to do something no other snowboarding game has: it sandboxes the game for you around an entire mountain. From any helicopter drop point, of which there are 10 to start with on each mountain, you can go literally anywhere on the mountain that you want to go, so long as gravity allows it. This allows you to explore everything from your typical backcountry (glades (trees), rocks, snow drifts, etc), to going off sheer cliff faces to carving along hundreds of yards of bare, white, snowy plateaus. If it's downhill, no matter where relative to your initial direction of travel, it's within your reach, period. Until you see it for yourself in-game, it's difficult to fathom the enormity of each mountain.
CONTROLS:
The controls in "Stoked" are probably the most well-mapped out controls I've seen in a snowboarding game as well. "Skate" got the ball rolling with it's analog-centered control scheme and this game follows suit perfectly. Left Stick controls your rotation, flips, as well as basic turning and stopping, etc. Right Stick controls your ollies much the same way that "Skate" does it and once you're in the air, is the one that dictates what grabs you'll achieve. RT and LT control your right and left hand grabs respectively, but also have another use on the ground...
Before you take off, pulling back on either trigger initiates a "pre-wind". What that means is that if you press the RT and wind your body to the right, when you ollie off a lip (or anything) your rider will automatically begin throwing his body into an opposite spin (RT to wind right, spin the opposite direction (to the left) upon take-off). What this does is it allows you to throw in larger spins than you would initially be able to do. It's a great and frequently overlooked feature that adds a great deal of realism to the game's repertoire.
The right-stick also allows you to pull off butters/rides on the ground and shifties in the air when not using your right or left hand. If I recall correctly, SW's scheme required you to change your configuration to allow for EITHER shifties or rotations in your analog stick. I remember being very disappointed at how poorly they used their control scheme, but enough bashing. The rest of the buttons don't matter so much. The bumpers control the camera view and the face buttons are just means of controlling your menu screens for the most part. The awesomeness is in how they managed to fit everything you would need to do on a snowboard so efficiently into 2 sticks and 2 buttons.
Although the flips section seems kind of bland at first since you can only do front and back flips, experimenting will solve that problem. Not only can you combine any grab in the game with a flip, but pre-winding before take-off will allow you to do off-axis tricks (instruction also included in handy reference guide). Although the game won't label them as such, you can do things like rodeos (essentially an off-axis flip while rotating). The game will lable such a thing as a "x rotation + x flip + x grab". Once you get good, it's a lot of fun throwing down rodeos and such, even if they don't next you the most points.
GAMEPLAY:
The game has many nice touches. It is the most realistic one out there, that's already been mentioned. You won't find yourself doing 3-4 flips and 900's+ on every move. Hell, even doing 720's in this game is difficult without pre-winding your spins, but in my eyes, that's for the better. Some of you may think, "But what about Shaun White and other guys who do ridiculous spins such as 1080's in the super pipe?" Well unfortunately after winding your body up, you can't do much else to assist your spins after take-off the way riders do in real life, so guess we'll have to wait for Stoked 2 to solve that dilemma.
Being able to go anywhere on the mountain makes it fun to just go exploring for the hell of it regardless of doing challenges. There are no set finish lines to end a run. You can end it at any point by hitting the back button (instantly restarting your run from the top or any place-markers you've set along the mountain) or by coming to a stop and hitting B. The end of the run (note run, not session) is almost always at some flat-bottom convergence of several hills which basically forces you into a bowl and eventually slows you down to nothing. However, with some creativity, even with the slightest amount of speed, you can milk points out of it with butters, nose/tail rides and popped ollies with some basic grabs.
There are 18 grabs available to you from the start and 2 basic flips (front and back). However, more grabs become unlocked based on your style of riding as well as beating other pro-riders that are featured in the game in what's essentially a game of HORSE. Rack up a better total score off their own tricks at the end of the run with them to have them teach you their own signature move. In addition, like "Skate," your rider never gets better or faster, nor do you unlock "better" snowboards that affect your ride. How you are from the start is how you are 'till the end, which means practice definitely makes perfect here.
Completing challenges around the mountain amass you the aforementioned "Fame Points" which, when racked up to something meaningful, will open up sponsor and media events. Completing sponsor events, as you guessed, earns you a new sponsor of which, I believe you can only have 3 at any one time out of a rather large selection. Burton, Billabong, Volcom, Rome, and Nitro just to name a few. Having various sponsors does nothing for you except unlock slightly more clothing and/or boards (depending on the sponser), which adds to the already limited customization, but it's a neglegable feature next to the spotlight of the main game. It is fun, however to waffle between different sponsors and seeing what new items are available to you (also netting an extra 5 fame points every time you switch sponsors).
Media events do nothing but get more fame points. One type of challenge involves sessioning for a film crew doing tricks they call out for you. The other kind of event (or 2) are photo ops which require doing a particular single or set of tricks over a particular feature or set of features (called a line). The lines are cool because upon completion of doing several tricks through a line of "frames," you get to see a cool progression still-shot of you going through the line. For anyone who's ever looked in a ski or snowboard magazine, it's pretty common to see such pictures, so that's a nice touch.
Eventually a helicopter will become open to you to pilot yourself around to any point on the mountain, allowing you to explore new lines that would otherwise be impossible to reach from your typical drop points.
Tricks take a bit of time to really learn well and implement fluently, but when you do, your sessions suddenly become a hell of a lot of fun and beating game-default session scores that once seemed impossible become much more reasonable. Getting massive air time off of snow drifts or cliff tops is loads of fun and never gets old. Jibbing (or grinds, for the masses) are done by hopping onto a rail and landing with any orientation to that rail to allow for different kinds of slides (ala "Skate" as well). In the case of this game, rails are 97% of the time fallen trees and logs of which there are more than plenty that fit well in the enviornment but are easy to spot. The other 3% includes cabin roofs, small fences and the like.
WRAP-UP:
The sound in the game is about on par with that of your typical snowboarding game. The riding on snow sounds excellent as does the contrast of grinding along a rock does (provided you don't bail, which usually happens once you hit rocks). I can't say much of the music because it's usually in the background and I don't tend to pay attention to it, so I'll stay quiet about that one.
The sense of speed in this game is great. As your rider goes faster, if you're in a crouched position, he'll slowly move into a tuck, bringing his hands straight at his sides and clenching his fists as the speed builds up faster and faster. It's a very nice touch and you really feel like you're bombing down the mountain when you get those moments.
The customization, as I briefly mentioned isn't so extensive, nor is the initial snowboard selection, but unless you're a stickler to making an in-game version of yourself, it's not a big deal. What I thought was very cool and put a smile on my face instantly was the fact that you can customize your stance. In laymen's terms, how far apart your bindings are and the angle at which they face off the center axis of the board. This is something I've never seen any other game do (maybe SWS did? but I can't remember). Although it has no bearing on the snowboard/rider itself, it's awesome recreating your own personal ride stance.
In my opinion, the people who would appreciate this game the most are those who snowboard in real life and can understand what it should really feel like to be on a board. For that reason, it is my favorite snowboarding game to date. This game does about as good of a job as anyone ever has thusfar conveying that feeling through a console and controller.