Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip Review

8.4

Format Nintendo Wii

Developer Ubisoft

Publisher Ubisoft

Genre Sports

16 Comments

Cast your mind back to 15 July, the day of Nintendo's E3 2008 press conference. Supermum and Nintendo Of America exec Cammie Dunaway took to the stage, and within five minutes a million Ninty fans had chewed their fists off in embarrassment as she delivered a disastrously pitched, cringe-inducing opening gambit.

Sorry to make you relive those moments (if you missed it all, lucky you) but there is a point: while Dunaway was giving it the 'I'm so smiley and happy and isn't life fun and wheeee!', there was actually a game being demoed. It was the balance board-compatible Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip. Yeah, we'd put it to the back of our minds too.

What makes that press conference calamity all the more galling is that SWS is the best game in the somewhat ailing skating/snowboarding genre that we've played in years. It looks great, it plays superbly, it's amusing and full of character, there are loads of multiplayer options, and perhaps most significantly, it pushes the use of balance board technology to a new level, albeit a level that we all knew the Wii Fit kit was destined for. If you're bereft of balance board then worry not as the game works just as well with a remote, albeit in a different way.

There's a story of sorts that the game's built around. Three mates - two girls and a bloke - get a call from their friend Shaun White, who tells them to haul their asses over to a Canadian ski resort and hook up with him for some fun on the slopes. So off they trot on a trip that also takes them to Chile, the Alps, Japan and the States, collecting new friends (ie, new riders to play as) on the way.

Gently funny and well delivered cartoon cutscenes pin the story together, as does the odd phone call from Shaun and the occasional email. Inconsequential it may be, but the story is pitched really nicely and breathes life into a game that could easily have been po-faced.

Each location acts as a hub - displayed via a resort map - where you can access a number of different events (see the 'Events Horizon' box for more on this), with each event having a Dare challenge and a Respect challenge. There are several tiers of difficulty per event so there's plenty of stuff on offer. We're not about to give you a lollipop for guessing that completing a set number of these challenges unlocks new locations and new riders.

So to the meat of the game, the all-important tearing down the virtual slopes and pulling off fancy tricks while perching on your balance board. With the plastic positioned lengthways towards the telly, your back foot is used to steer the board, putting your weight in the desired direction to turn. For sharp turns - carving, to use the proper parlance - you hold the B button down on the remote as you shift your weight. Shifting your weight to your front foot while you reduce the pressure at the rear makes you go faster, your on-screen rider tucking themselves up accordingly.

Now we're no experts at the real thing, but this is pretty much how we remember being taught to control a snowboard on a trip to the Canadian Rockies a few years back. It certainly feels right, even if it is missing certain body parts freezing up as a result of the all-too-frequent bails and bumps. Back in the game, jumps are performed by making a pumping motion with your legs. Again, this feels right, but that's based on us actually being able to ollie on a real-world skateboard.

Once you've launched yourself off a ramp or jump or whatever, you then pull tricks using a combination of foot movement on the board and holding the A and B buttons on the remote. In truth the trickery is pretty tough to get the hang of, at least initially. Hand, eye and foot co-ordination? Don't they know our poor male brains can only cope with one thing at once? Persevere and learn all the combos, though, and eventually it'll all come together.

Things are considerably easier to control using just the remote. Here you tilt the remote to steer, make an upward motion to jump and then twist the remote while holding A and B to perform a trick. Combos of tricks are rendered a lot easier this way, so the points awarded for these showboating interludes rack up more quickly. To compensate for this the challenges are a fair whack tougher (if it's a points-based test, for example, you'll need to score a lot more using the remote than you would with the board).

The single-player mode is sizeable enough but there's plenty more fun to be had in multiplayer. Two, three or four can play and there's a co-op mode (where two of you, playing in split-screen, need to win medals to progress), split-screen Versus and Hot Seat, where you take turns to see who can amass the most points or do a run in the fastest time. The latter is especially good if there's only the one balance board between you - it certainly caused much amusement in the NGamer office when we tried it out, mainly thanks to Andy contorting his body at seemingly impossible angles as he tried to keep his rider on the level.

So the gameplay is as strong as you like, and makes use of the Wii's unique functionality in far superior fashion to Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, say. But what gives the game its standout quality is its plentiful supply of neat little touches, which are mainly visual. An example: for each challenge you choose a cameraman (one of the other riders in your party) and they ride behind you, effectively filming your run (although there's no replay function). When you bail the camera briefly goes all jerky and gets covered with snow, as does your rider. Continue on your way down the slope and the snow is shaken from both.

Indeed, the overall look of the game is excellent, both technically and in terms of style. The snow is convincing, especially the trail that your board leaves behind. Backdrops are nicely rendered in the same semi-cartoon style as the riders, and other little things, such as startled moose cantering in front of your rider, adds even more atmosphere. We'll be nice and overlook the all-too-blatant in-game advertising (some runs are sponsored by a chain of sandwich shops *sighs deeply*).

The characters are actually likeable rather than nauseating, and are nicely voiced. Mention has to be made of the excellent soundtrack too, which has apparently been chosen by Shaun White himself. Any game that has Blue Oyster Cult's Don't Fear The Reaper as a title song2 and lets you pelt down a mountain to the strains of We Come One by Faithless is alright by us.

We've yet to see EA's balance board-enabled Skate It in action for long enough to form any strong opinion about the game, despite its mid-November release, but hopefully it will be as well executed as this. In the meantime we're more than content on our road trip. Shaun White Snowboarding is fun. It makes us happy and it makes us smile. Wheeee!

Matthew Castle