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“The Jet Gamer” Game Review: Shaun White Snowboarding
10 years ago
Yes, I know I’m doing several of these close together, but this one was a lot shorter than I thought It was going to be.
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip
Snowboarding isn’t exactly my thing, but I’ve played a few snowboarding games or mini-games in other games, and they hadn’t been that disappointing. It pretty much is just skateboarding on snow instead of wheels and concrete. I saw this game for super cheap and figured why not give it a try and see how a snowboarding game can stand on its own instead of being just another part of a bigger game. Let’s find out if it can do just that.
Gameplay
Shaun White Snowboarding does do what it says on the box, and that is that it offers a snowboarding experience for players on the Wii. However, it doesn’t seem be a very exciting experience though. The bulk of the game revolves around you as a snowboarder, being followed by another rider holding a camera as you snowboard down a mountain doing really only one of a few different objectives. You are either competing for points, competing for time, or you are trying to pick up a certain number of crowns or trash before you hit the bottom of the mountain. That is really it. There is nothing else. There may be one or two races, but that is it. This game really could have benefited from more modes or objectives to do to keep the player motivated to get through the main story mode. Yes, there is a versus’ mode and such like that for more than one player, but really, it didn’t catch my eye at all. The game didn’t really seem to be bad when it come to the things you were doing in the game, it honestly just felt a little dull. It isn’t that I don’t like snowboarding either, as I stated before, I’ve played snowboarding mini games and other such games that involve snowboarding and they are actually quite fun. This snowboarding game though, just overall to me, felt like there was just something missing. There isn’t a ton to talk about in gameplay as really, I just explained all there is to know about the game and what you do during the levels. The only additional things are if you can do a secondary objective in the levels, that are harder than your main objective, you can unlock photos in the game. That is really it. Some of these objectives are harder yes, but really with such a minor thing being the incentive to keep playing the main levels, I don’t see a lasting appeal much here for gameplay. Maybe if this was what you were looking forward to then you will enjoy doing similar things each and every level of the game, but for me, it felt like there was a missed opportunity.
Story
Okay, this is just pathetic. I know you shouldn’t expect much in a snowboarding game, but if you are going to actually try and do a story in a semi sports game like this at least put more effort into it than this game did here. The story consist of a group of snowboarding teen/young adults going from mountain to mountain snowboarding, while trying to catch up to the ever elusive Shaun White while making new snowboarding friends along the way. That is it. As you advance from mountain to mountain you get a new cell phone call from Shaun saying you just missed him, while you the have around five levels on that mountain to do before going to the next one. There is nothing story related at all between each mountain. There are e-mails that show up between levels, but instead of using this as a way of letting you get to know the characters, all the e-mails are usually just spam e-mail to confuse the player.
Why in the world would you waste this opportunity, and instead think the player is going to gain any interest from you showing spam e-mail to them between levels. Yes, the game does attempt a story with you trying to catch up to Shaun White, but really you could have added content to make this more appealing as you learn next to nothing about each playable character in the game as you do so. So much wasted opportunity to actually give this game a decent story. It isn’t that interesting at all. Don’t play this game expecting much in the form of story at all, not that I was even expecting one in the first place.
Graphics
I was expecting this game to possibly have some alright graphics and well, they were sort of average at best. I was honestly expecting realistic looking graphics like you would see in one of the tony hawk games, but instead, Shaun White’s Snowboarding has cartoony graphics. That wouldn’t be too much of a problem though if really there was much else other than just snow and darkness in a lot of the levels. There is not much on any of the tracks, other than rails, jumps and occasional trees and grass. There are other things that go on around you as you are boarding, but you hardly notice any of these things. Maybe my expectations were too high here, but I would expect to see more things on the tracks other than just white everywhere and no other way of catching the players attention. You will see things outside of the tracks and people watching occasionally, especially at the end of a run were there will be lots of people sometimes and shiny things to signal the end of your run, but other than that, you are usually boarding out in the wilderness and there is nothing but mountain and more trees to look at as you are playing the game. The graphics don’t seem to be bad to me, but once again, nothing really stands out as just something that needs to be looked out with a wow factor. The very very few cut scenes in the game may look nice, but they are so short they may as well not count. More of them might have helped this area a lot, but when there are only like four little scenes in this game, it really doesn’t matter. Things are just average really here.
Sound
This is really the main saving grace of this game is the soundtrack that is put into the game for you to listen to as you are boarding down the hill or are sitting in the character select van just listening to the music of the game. There are many old school classic rock music tracks from back in the day, and are quite nice to listen to as you are boarding. If anything else, when you are playing this game, I would give the sound track a listen to as it really is one of the main enjoyable things about this game. At least they got something in the game that isn’t just average or on the dull side. Give these songs a listen to if you are going to play this game. It is worth it. Other than the music, the sounds you hear really aren’t that entertaining and it mainly consists of snowboarding sounds of boarding over snow and the sound of you bailing or landing tricks. There are only so many sound bites from the characters. They are extremely limited in general. The sound track is what saves this section. Give it a listen.
Control
This game’s controls aren’t that great. You sometimes expect that with Wii games that controls can be hit or miss when you rely on the motion controls too much, and this is an example of just that. You turn the wiimote left and right to turn and use it to jump and do all the tricks in the game. You do tricks by flicking the remote around and holding certain buttons or directions, which can make doing certain tricks quite tricky to do. This is especially so, seeing as many of the tricks rely on you twisting or thrusting the wiimote into certain directions, which can produce mixed results at best. I sometimes could get the game to do what I wanted it to do, and other times it really didn’t pay off at all. The trickiest thing to do though is landing your tricks and jumps. Due to needing to be exact to land tricks perfectly, the not so great precision of the wiimote, even with a wiimotionplus on it, isn’t that great. I found myself so often either landing crooked, which will kill your combo meter, or crashing due to landing sideways, due to the wiimote still twisting the character even when I had stopped moving the controller to try and land the board. Speaking of boards, you can use the Wii Balance Board on this game, which does sound like a neat idea for a snowboarding game. However, due to how non-responsive normal controls are, I wouldn’t recommend trying it. I didn’t even want to try. I figured if the regular controls are this tricky to use, why would I even bother using a more difficult to use accessory? Yeah, no thank you.
Replay Value
The replay value here is just again, average at best. There isn’t exactly a great lasting appeal to this game, unless you like playing the few limiting levels over and over again. Each level only has two objectives, one more after you beat the game, and that’s it really. Even then, only one of the three missions per level even counts towards anything other than unlocking pictures. I guess you can say there is some lasting appeal if you want to unlock all that extra content and do all the respect missions as they call them. For people that want to complete all of that, you will have many more hours than I did at this game. If these don’t appeal to you however, such as it did me due to it not being a super interesting game, then yeah, this won’t be a game with great lasting appeal. Due to what is in there, I gave this game sort of an average rating due to the extras it does have, but really, it just barely made that. The game just seems to have this honest dull about it to me, but that is just me.
Overall, I wasn’t exactly impressed with Shaun White Snowboarding. It isn’t the worst game out there, but really, due to some finicky controls and honestly a sort of dull experience I got from the game, I couldn’t say this is going to be a game that everyone should go running out to get. If you just want to fill your collection or give this game a try and you can get it for around a dollar like I did, then sure give it a try for yourself. However, honestly, unless you really enjoy snowboarding games, I wouldn’t recommend this be something you rush out to go play. It’s not the worst game I’ve ever played by any means, but I wasn’t exactly impressed here.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip a five point five out of ten.
Gameplay: 5
Story: 3
Graphics: 6
Sound: 9
Control: 4
Replay Value: 6
Overall: 5.5
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip
Snowboarding isn’t exactly my thing, but I’ve played a few snowboarding games or mini-games in other games, and they hadn’t been that disappointing. It pretty much is just skateboarding on snow instead of wheels and concrete. I saw this game for super cheap and figured why not give it a try and see how a snowboarding game can stand on its own instead of being just another part of a bigger game. Let’s find out if it can do just that.
Gameplay
Shaun White Snowboarding does do what it says on the box, and that is that it offers a snowboarding experience for players on the Wii. However, it doesn’t seem be a very exciting experience though. The bulk of the game revolves around you as a snowboarder, being followed by another rider holding a camera as you snowboard down a mountain doing really only one of a few different objectives. You are either competing for points, competing for time, or you are trying to pick up a certain number of crowns or trash before you hit the bottom of the mountain. That is really it. There is nothing else. There may be one or two races, but that is it. This game really could have benefited from more modes or objectives to do to keep the player motivated to get through the main story mode. Yes, there is a versus’ mode and such like that for more than one player, but really, it didn’t catch my eye at all. The game didn’t really seem to be bad when it come to the things you were doing in the game, it honestly just felt a little dull. It isn’t that I don’t like snowboarding either, as I stated before, I’ve played snowboarding mini games and other such games that involve snowboarding and they are actually quite fun. This snowboarding game though, just overall to me, felt like there was just something missing. There isn’t a ton to talk about in gameplay as really, I just explained all there is to know about the game and what you do during the levels. The only additional things are if you can do a secondary objective in the levels, that are harder than your main objective, you can unlock photos in the game. That is really it. Some of these objectives are harder yes, but really with such a minor thing being the incentive to keep playing the main levels, I don’t see a lasting appeal much here for gameplay. Maybe if this was what you were looking forward to then you will enjoy doing similar things each and every level of the game, but for me, it felt like there was a missed opportunity.
Story
Okay, this is just pathetic. I know you shouldn’t expect much in a snowboarding game, but if you are going to actually try and do a story in a semi sports game like this at least put more effort into it than this game did here. The story consist of a group of snowboarding teen/young adults going from mountain to mountain snowboarding, while trying to catch up to the ever elusive Shaun White while making new snowboarding friends along the way. That is it. As you advance from mountain to mountain you get a new cell phone call from Shaun saying you just missed him, while you the have around five levels on that mountain to do before going to the next one. There is nothing story related at all between each mountain. There are e-mails that show up between levels, but instead of using this as a way of letting you get to know the characters, all the e-mails are usually just spam e-mail to confuse the player.
Why in the world would you waste this opportunity, and instead think the player is going to gain any interest from you showing spam e-mail to them between levels. Yes, the game does attempt a story with you trying to catch up to Shaun White, but really you could have added content to make this more appealing as you learn next to nothing about each playable character in the game as you do so. So much wasted opportunity to actually give this game a decent story. It isn’t that interesting at all. Don’t play this game expecting much in the form of story at all, not that I was even expecting one in the first place.
Graphics
I was expecting this game to possibly have some alright graphics and well, they were sort of average at best. I was honestly expecting realistic looking graphics like you would see in one of the tony hawk games, but instead, Shaun White’s Snowboarding has cartoony graphics. That wouldn’t be too much of a problem though if really there was much else other than just snow and darkness in a lot of the levels. There is not much on any of the tracks, other than rails, jumps and occasional trees and grass. There are other things that go on around you as you are boarding, but you hardly notice any of these things. Maybe my expectations were too high here, but I would expect to see more things on the tracks other than just white everywhere and no other way of catching the players attention. You will see things outside of the tracks and people watching occasionally, especially at the end of a run were there will be lots of people sometimes and shiny things to signal the end of your run, but other than that, you are usually boarding out in the wilderness and there is nothing but mountain and more trees to look at as you are playing the game. The graphics don’t seem to be bad to me, but once again, nothing really stands out as just something that needs to be looked out with a wow factor. The very very few cut scenes in the game may look nice, but they are so short they may as well not count. More of them might have helped this area a lot, but when there are only like four little scenes in this game, it really doesn’t matter. Things are just average really here.
Sound
This is really the main saving grace of this game is the soundtrack that is put into the game for you to listen to as you are boarding down the hill or are sitting in the character select van just listening to the music of the game. There are many old school classic rock music tracks from back in the day, and are quite nice to listen to as you are boarding. If anything else, when you are playing this game, I would give the sound track a listen to as it really is one of the main enjoyable things about this game. At least they got something in the game that isn’t just average or on the dull side. Give these songs a listen to if you are going to play this game. It is worth it. Other than the music, the sounds you hear really aren’t that entertaining and it mainly consists of snowboarding sounds of boarding over snow and the sound of you bailing or landing tricks. There are only so many sound bites from the characters. They are extremely limited in general. The sound track is what saves this section. Give it a listen.
Control
This game’s controls aren’t that great. You sometimes expect that with Wii games that controls can be hit or miss when you rely on the motion controls too much, and this is an example of just that. You turn the wiimote left and right to turn and use it to jump and do all the tricks in the game. You do tricks by flicking the remote around and holding certain buttons or directions, which can make doing certain tricks quite tricky to do. This is especially so, seeing as many of the tricks rely on you twisting or thrusting the wiimote into certain directions, which can produce mixed results at best. I sometimes could get the game to do what I wanted it to do, and other times it really didn’t pay off at all. The trickiest thing to do though is landing your tricks and jumps. Due to needing to be exact to land tricks perfectly, the not so great precision of the wiimote, even with a wiimotionplus on it, isn’t that great. I found myself so often either landing crooked, which will kill your combo meter, or crashing due to landing sideways, due to the wiimote still twisting the character even when I had stopped moving the controller to try and land the board. Speaking of boards, you can use the Wii Balance Board on this game, which does sound like a neat idea for a snowboarding game. However, due to how non-responsive normal controls are, I wouldn’t recommend trying it. I didn’t even want to try. I figured if the regular controls are this tricky to use, why would I even bother using a more difficult to use accessory? Yeah, no thank you.
Replay Value
The replay value here is just again, average at best. There isn’t exactly a great lasting appeal to this game, unless you like playing the few limiting levels over and over again. Each level only has two objectives, one more after you beat the game, and that’s it really. Even then, only one of the three missions per level even counts towards anything other than unlocking pictures. I guess you can say there is some lasting appeal if you want to unlock all that extra content and do all the respect missions as they call them. For people that want to complete all of that, you will have many more hours than I did at this game. If these don’t appeal to you however, such as it did me due to it not being a super interesting game, then yeah, this won’t be a game with great lasting appeal. Due to what is in there, I gave this game sort of an average rating due to the extras it does have, but really, it just barely made that. The game just seems to have this honest dull about it to me, but that is just me.
Overall, I wasn’t exactly impressed with Shaun White Snowboarding. It isn’t the worst game out there, but really, due to some finicky controls and honestly a sort of dull experience I got from the game, I couldn’t say this is going to be a game that everyone should go running out to get. If you just want to fill your collection or give this game a try and you can get it for around a dollar like I did, then sure give it a try for yourself. However, honestly, unless you really enjoy snowboarding games, I wouldn’t recommend this be something you rush out to go play. It’s not the worst game I’ve ever played by any means, but I wasn’t exactly impressed here.
Overall, in my opinion at least, I give Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip a five point five out of ten.
Gameplay: 5
Story: 3
Graphics: 6
Sound: 9
Control: 4
Replay Value: 6
Overall: 5.5
