Quirky humor, nice visual style and a huge amount of challenges and missions make this well worth playing.
The character creation options are fairly broad considering how unimportant a part of the game it is, you can choose from a variety of outfits, goggles, gloves and boards, and unlock more as you progress throughout the game.
The games story is basic enough, but what really shines is the sheer amount of insane, geniunely funny humor in the game, from talking hands that just want some bread, to ninja anime style shorts with hilarious dialogue, Amped 3 is packed with rediculous humor that gives it a bit of distance, not taking itself too seriously.
The gameplay in Amped 3 consists of you choosing a mountain, although you only have access to one before you advance the storyline, and a starting point on that mountin, you then have free roam around the mountain. Completely free to travel to whatever challenges you wish to participate in, you can even ride a snowmobile around instead, or at any time, instantly teleport to a starting location on the mountain.
The core of the gameplay revolves around completing challenges, of which there are several main types, media callouts, which have you showing off to the press, and some more obscure challenges such as slaloms, or hurting yourself as much as possible coming off a sled. Media callouts are viewed from the perspective of whoever is filming you, which can be very disoreinting, especially when the whole idea is to get a high score, you need to be able to see the ground properly to judge your landing, but often you have to guess when to stop tricking. This isn't a major annoyance as most of these are very easy to accomplish, but it can get on your nerves.
Completing thse challenges nets you large amounts of respect, and some cash, the more respect you have, the more challenges, and areas of the various mountains you open up. You can easily progress through the game without doing all of these challenges, but you will likely see a fair few of them, as to break up the story you will sometimes need to complete challenges for a certain amount of respect points before the next storyline mission becomes available. This is not as bad as it sounds however, these intervals are just short enough to spread out the gameplay by a little longer, but short enough not to cause annoyance.
For the most part, the controls are slick and register well, you can cut your way through the snow with relative ease, occasionally, you will be attacked with snowballs, blocking your vision, which can be extremely offputting during challenges, but happens rarely.
Amped 3 has a wide variety of music to appeal to all sorts of people who might be into snowboarding, however for those that perhaps don't like rap music, there are no playlist options, and like the majority of other games, Amped 3 doesnt take advantage of the custom playlist feature, although it would greatly benefit from it.
Amped 3 certainly isn't the longest game in the world, with around 5 mountains, all relatively large with the exception of the first, they can take you a while to get through. But if you're determined, the main story can easily be finished in a weekend. But you would be missing out on a large portion of the game by skipping the optional challenges.
Overall, Amped 3 is a very enjoyable experience, with a lot of optional gameplay that could last quite a while, what with one of the games achievements requiring you to have a gold medal on each of the games 250+ challenges. Although this game would have greatly benefited from a custom soundtrack option, the music within the game is still one of it's highlights, it manages to please most tastes, while inkeeping with the games humor, and never being too serious.