Shaun White is the of - the biggest name in the business - that's all you really need to know about the Californian born 22-year old X-Games champion. And with respect to the gaming world that is where the shared tales of success with the well known icon come to an end. Ubisoft's tentative jump into the world of snowboarding has turned out, apart from a few saving graces, to be a gnarly wipeout.

The game operates entirely in a free-roaming open mountain environment rather than using a menu system. The player negotiates their way via ski-lifts, snowboarding, and even getting off the board and walking, to collect coins and tackle various challenges laid throughout four separate mountains spread across the globe. These challenges are displayed on a mini-map. Once enough coins are collected and challenges are completed then you gain enough reputation to challenge Shuan White himself and go down in snowboarding history. Or something like that.

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The free roaming system is interesting in that it allows the player an extra degree of immersion; but to be honest it gets annoying after a while. I mean, why didn't the developers just use a bloody menu? Impatience is assisted by a waypoint warp which allows players to lay a waypoint and then warp instantly back to it; it's not enough. A rather smart feature however is that you can play through the whole game whilst connected and invite other players to participate in challenges instantaneously.

The game's physics and tricks are not as wild as snowboarding games of the past, and the title actually seems kind of lethargic compared to the old classics like SSX. In fact, this is to the game's detriment. Because the tricks are hard to perform and they don't actually look that impressive, the game becomes more frustrating than it is fun. Additionally you can't stop on ice, at all - I've never snowboarded myself but that seems a little unrealistic. The virtual snow spray does look the part, though.

The first part of the game is spent learning special super-human style powers which allow you to do things in the free-roaming mountain mode such as go really fast or leap in the air for unrealistic amounts of time. But these powers are then stripped whenever you actually enter a challenge, so their use is restricted to monotonous coin collecting. Furthermore, the tutorial, or more precisely the pop-up tips, are poorly worded, strangely timed, and don't best assist with learning how to control the game as a stronger tutorial might have.

The challenges take the form of the expected snowboarding-type events including half-pipe tricks, various trick-oriented events, and multiple race styles. One notable style is the erroneously named 'Death Race' where players must race for the finish armed with snowballs which they can throw at each other to gain an advantage. It is rather childish, stupidly arcadey, but strangely it is pretty much the most fun this game has to offer.

Another point to note is that the half-pipe is ridiculously hard to get the hang of, just working out exactly what I was supposed to do took several repeated attempts.

The worst first: the control system for this game is, at times, twisted. The left analogue stick controls movement, while tricks are performed by using the top buttons in combination with either analogue stick. The face buttons are used to emote, interact, throw snowballs (yes, throw snowballs) and toggle the camera. So far so good, except in practice it doesn't translate so well.

The control combinations required to perform tricks are orientation based, so in situations - such as the half-pipe - when the player is changing orientation a lot this can become confusing and needlessly difficult. Furthermore, chaining tricks like rail jumps is incredibly difficult to pull-off, so much so that after a while most players will be discouraged from even trying to do so.

On the up side, the game looks incredible - stellar you might say. have really captured the beauty of a snowy mountaintop landscape, complete with caves, glaciers, ice, varied terrain, and an unrivalled draw distance. The snowboard tracks leave grooves in the snow and snow sprays realistically from all the forceful angles of the board. Additionally, character animations are fluid and the custom-created character model moves realistically in the trendy branded ski-wear (Oakley/Burton, etc.) the player choses.

The game's sound is largely dominated by the rock soundtrack, tunes from Blue Oyster Cult, Run DMC, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and so on. Apparently the music reflects Shaun's own taste - although I wouldn't know. The sound effects themselves do the job, nothing to get too excited about but neither anything to spoil the mood.

Ultimately, as the first iteration in a surely recurring franchise of releases, Snowboarding is nothing to write home about at all. Impressive visuals and physics don't make up for frustrating controls and a sense that the game is lacking a certain congruency. I'd rather be playing one of the old SSX games to be honest.

60%

By Richard Nolan