Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip Review
A Review - By Predat0r
Snowboarding games haven’t really featured heavily on the Wii in the past, with the genre only chalking up one official title in ‘SSX’ and playing only a small part in Wii Ski and Wii Fit. That is about to change with Ubisoft’s latest offering ‘Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip’; a unique take on the franchise (featuring balance board support) that has been written specifically for the Wii with close collaboration from Shaun White himself. So dust off your balance board, it is time to ‘carve up’ the living room.
Gameplay: 8.0
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip for the Wii features a story that is totally unique to the other games in the series. Abandoning the ‘free roam’ model on other platforms, Wii players will compete in events at various locations around the globe, (including Canada, Peru, Japan and Switzerland), unlocking new locations, riders and other content in a bid to ride with the elusive Shaun White.
The game is presented extremely well, with the intro, menus and music ‘leaping out’ to provide a great first impression. The menu navigation can be confusing at first, but once you get past this you will find that you have to choose two riders to hit the snow – one to ride, and one as your cameraman; the premise being that the rider with the camera is ‘filming’ the action from behind you. There are nine riders available, starting initially with two and unlocking the rest (including Shaun White himself) during the course of the game. Each rider has different abilities (including jumping, landing and speed) that can be suited to different mountains and events.
Each mountain in the game features several events including (among others) downhill and halfpipe. Each of the events has two goals – a ‘dare’ goal and a ‘respect’ goal both of which may involve winning a race, beating a specific time or performing tricks to gain points. ‘Dare’ is the easiest and will usually unlock the next event on the mountain, while ‘respect’ will take a bit longer to complete and as you progress more game content is unlocked.
There are two ways to play Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip: with the Wii remote or with the Wii balance board. Playing with the Wii remote involves twisting the remote to change direction and pressing buttons to perform tricks and while this is not too bad, the real star here is the Wii balance board. Similar to the mini games in Wii Fit, play involves turning the balance board and standing ‘side on’ in a snowboarding stance. Leaning forward on the board increases your speed, leaning to your ‘toe edge’ or ‘heel edge’ turn the rider left and right and holding the ‘B’ button introduces carving to the mix for tighter turns. Executing jumping involves players bending their knees then straightening up again.
When launching the rider into the air grabs can be performed by holding the ‘A’ button, and spins and flips can be added by leaning left, right, forward and back. Popping off a jump, leaning to the left to spin and then rocking onto your back foot to execute a 360 backflip feels great and is rewarding when you pull off a perfect landing. Perfect landings will allow you to continue the point multiplier by chaining more tricks together and giving you a boost when filling a point meter.
There are some problems with the gameplay however. For example, when attempting to jump onto a rail to perform a slide, the player often seems to magically get onto the rail, even if you have miss-timed the jump. The rider will also sometimes automatically navigate around trees or rocks when you strike them. Some quirks like this do make the game reasonably easy to play and it would have been nice to see the obstacles in the game being less forgiving.
While there is a lack of online playing options, the local multiplayer gameplay is surprisingly well designed with the game offering a four player split screen or ‘hot seat’ multiplayer (taking turns) mode. These modes also allow the solo campaign to be played with up to four players ‘co-op’ (featuring unique challenges) and although only one balance board can be used at a time, the local multiplayer modes in the game are a lot of fun with a few friends racing (and jostling) to the bottom of a run.
Although the balance board controls are perhaps slightly less responsive than a traditional Wii remote and nunchuck they actually have a very natural and comfortable feel. Shifting weight to accelerate or turn the rider provides a certain satisfaction while playing the game and the balance board control method makes it hard to stop playing.
These controls do have some slight issues, with ‘extra jumps’ sometimes being accidentally performed when regaining your balance and half pipe events being a little difficult to control in terms of timing. However, even though some players might reach for the traditional controls in order to complete the harder levels and challenges in the game, it is really quite hard to pass up the balance board control method for a unique and immersive gaming experience.
Graphics: 8.0
The graphics in Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip are entirely unique to the Wii version of the game and although they are not technically superior when compared to the other platform versions, they still look great. A ‘comic book’ style has been applied to the game and the neat cell shaded graphics (particularly in the somewhat amusing cut-scenes) are not unlike a ‘flash’ movie/cartoon. This style also extends into the games tricks and scoring with comical icons displayed when executing grabs; ‘Melon’ grabs are indicated with watermelons and ‘Japan’ grabs invoke a little bonsai plant.
While a ‘grass roots’ approach has been taken to the visuals, there is still a decent amount of effects added. The camera idea adds atmosphere and features a ‘pause’ and ‘rec’ image as the rider’s cameraman prepares for the start of the run. The animations are smooth and the crashes feature a thumping shake of the screen, motion blurring and snow spayed on the ‘camera’, as well as a decent coating of snow on the rider. Other effects are also applied well including snow spray from helicopters and motion blur when hitting high speeds.
The levels are not spectacular, but are reasonably well designed and incorporate rails and jumps into the natural surroundings. It would have been nice to see some more exciting textures and deeper ‘powder’ effects for sinking in deep snow (which was even in the N64 version of ‘1080’), but these are only minor criticisms.
Ubisoft has realized that the Wii cannot compete with the beefy ‘Assassin’s Creed’ graphics engine used by the other console versions of the game, but has used this to an advantage by introducing a graphic style that delivers a smooth frame rate that is perfectly suited to the Wii.
Sound: 8.0
Considering the ‘arcade’ feel of the graphics and gameplay, the sound effects in the actual game are a little lacking, and it would have been nice to have more dynamic and exciting sounds while riding and performing tricks. The voice acting is also pretty standard, but overall not too bad.
What makes up for these shortfalls is the great soundtrack which packs 40 licensed tracks featuring punk and rock tracks from bands like ‘Audioslave’ and ‘Goldfinger’ as well as some interesting inclusions from ‘Bob Dylan’ and ‘Jefferson Airplane’. Players can easily change the soundtrack during a ride by pressing the ‘1’ button and it adds a lot of atmosphere to the game.
Difficulty: 7.5
Shaun White Snowboarding is very easy to pick up and play, especially when just using the Wii remote. The balance board controls introduce much more of a challenge and are definitely the recommended method of playing the game.
While it may not take much time to start unlocking content in the games, coming back to complete the ‘respect’ goals in each event ensures a reasonable balance between fun and frustration. Players may feel inclined to switch back to the easier control styles, but this does feel like ‘cheating’ and sticking with the balance board is a more challenging way to complete the game.
Value: 7.5
Most of the challenges in the game can be completed reasonably quickly, but as many of the challenges include ‘racing against the clock’ or ‘trick’ high scores, players can revisit events to race against their own times and records adding more long term appeal. The enjoyable 2-4 player co-op mode will also ensure that players with a few mates will definitely get a lot more out of the game in the long term.
The real value to the game is realized if players have already purchased the Wii balance board. The controls are somewhat of a novelty for people to try, but still work well. However having said this, without the balance board – there is not much difference between this and ‘SSX’ which you can probably still find for a much cheaper price.
Overall: 7.9
Ubisoft has to be congratulated on how they have tackled the development of Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip for the Wii. Too many mainstream cross platform titles attempt to force a square peg into a round hole in trying to port a game from the Xbox360 or PS3 directly to the Wii. Creating a version of the game designed specifically for the Wii with unique graphics and gameplay is an example that more developers should take note of.
Aside from being a ‘Wii focused’ game, the balance board controls (as it has already been pointed out numerous times!) are by far what makes the gameplay in Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip really stand out. While it doesn’t exactly feel like a genuine snowboard, it is a lot closer than using traditional controllers. Combining this gameplay with some well designed graphics, a professional soundtrack and some good local multiplayer options makes Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip a pretty well rounded title. While some features from the other versions might have been appreciated (such as the ‘go anywhere’ riding), if you own a Wii with a balance board and enjoy snowboarding, you would be hard pressed not to like this game.