Great game for a great price, although many problems hold Stoked back from being the perfect game it could have been.
Stoked throws you into the deep end with 3 massive mountains, and 2 more to unlock. The basic premise is to go down each of the trails on the mountains, and complete the 10 objectives it holds. Each time you complete an objective you are awarded with fame points. Earn enough fame points and complete enough objectives and you can unlock a competition. It's a simple concept but the objectives take no longer than half a minute. With goals such as reaching a certain number of points using only spins and grabs, the game starts to feel more like a grind. The entire package would have been better off focusing on longer objectives that offered a little more depth than "do this trick." Aside from the lack of depth to objectives, I do admit the game sucks you in, and has a fast enough pace to make you want to move forward. And that is one of the best things about this game is there is SO much to do, although its biggest downfall is that more often than not you have to find out how to do that on your own. My biggest complaint about the game is that it offers almost no direction. There is no storyline, there is nothing that you know of as an "end goal" until you actually reach it.
The controls are very well implemented, and feel like Skate's "Flick-It" system. If you are unfamiliar with Skate, you essentially control your board with the right analog stick and control your body with the left. Two styles of play add some replay value to the package, wherein you can snowboard "Hucker" style, where you are trying to do as many spins and grabs as you can before landing, or you can play "Stlyish" where you don't grab or spin as much but your line will flow better and look smoother. Sometimes, however, when you are going to land, you line your board up with the ground and you will still bail because you weren't "even" with the ground. I have looked on many forums and see that many players have had problems with this as well, and it really is frustrating pulling off a high point trick and thinking your landing is perfect but falling on your face.
The mountains themselves are HUGE and there is a lot to explore between them. All the mountains are varied enough to feel unique, and each trail has enough jumps and rails to feel interesting without being oversaturated, and all of them look absolutely stunning to boot. Keeping up with the theme of having no direction, none of the mountains have a real "end" they just sort of become flat so you can't ride anymore. I understand this keeps up with the realism but it's a nitpick more than a flaw. Another problem I saw with the environments is that there are no "rails" or "boxes" only fallen trees or tops of cabins to grind on, and natural snow drifts to jump off of. This gives the game a very realistic touch and feels like you really are in the middle of nowhere, but I would have liked to have some snow parks added into the game. The only other flaw I have with the environments is that there will be some massive jumps that look really fun to pull off a huge trick, but find that right after it, and almost exactly where you want to land, there is a massive tree or a bunch of rocks that make that specific jump almost useless. This happens more than you would think, and it really detracts from the flow of the game when you are on a huge line and bail because of a game flaw.
The sounds in the game are near perfect. From the sound the snow makes when it crinkles under your board, to the sound of the wind blowing around you when you hit an insanely high jump on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, all of them make you feel like your actually there. The soundtrack is filled with TONS of music, but none of the music I found was very well known, it is comprised almost entirely from no name bands/musicians. That's not to say that a lot of the songs are good, but I will say that I only found a good 2-3 songs I actually really liked, so I played with the music off for the most part.
The game offers about 30-40 hours of game play to do everything you can; considering the game is $40 brand new, that is an enormous value for what you are paying. Even after you complete all of the challenges, finding new spots to drop in from the helicopter you pilot provides loads of entertainment. Don't expect much out of the multiplayer. There are varied game types that are just like the objectives you would find in the single player game but I have never played the game and actually had someone playing online making multiplayer all but nonexistent. For achievement hunters this poses a problem because one of the achievements is to take a certain number of photographs of other players on Live, this can prove problematic if no one plays.
All in all the game admittedly has many downfalls, but none of them make it "bad." There is so much to do and when it comes down to it, its realistic and its fun, and that's what counts the most. I really do hope that the series is continued, and that the developers learn from their mistakes, because I honestly believe this could become the best snowboarding series to date.