Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding is a visual masterpeice, with impressive gameplay, and a nice single player.
User Rating: 8.8 | Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding XBOX
Amped: FS is one of the first games released with the Xbox also developed by Microsoft itself. It has an interesting, not yet seen single player system in ways making it very addicting, and sometimes I don't want to put the controller down. The graphics are beautiful and just awesome. All these interpret an amazing game. The game has a lot of humor built into it, say if you get the amount of score needed to finish that part you'll end up on the headlines of a newspaper or on the internet, and just put these little quirky things in there for some very interesting stuff. The way the game play works is like Tony Hawk in was, such as getting a certain Pro score, and a Media score which is where you do a trick in front of a camera and it all adds up as the media is scattered throughout the level. Those are all interesting little things and they get really tough throughout the game, the scores get really high and it becomes just insane. It also has another thing you must explore the level for scattered snowmen around the leaves you play, and if you get them all (which I haven't yet) you will be happy. They are very hard to find and sometimes impossible making it frustrating, and just plain stupid in ways, why did they put it into the game I wonder sometimes. Another addition the game play is a sponsor run, certain sponsors like certain moves. Some like Rail tricks, some like Grabs, or big air tricks and so ever on. This parts of it is cool, by beating the sponsors score, and getting a bar on the top of your screen full into the Amped part of it will make you succeed, there are 3 sponsors per level and they get really tough, and it is also frustrating at times. The trick system is really fun to use. Say you Ollie off a jump and your in the air, by moving the left analog stick you can rotate your character, doing flips and spins. With the right analog stick you can pull of grabs. In every different direction you push the right analog stick will do a different grab. This is a very useful thing, making it easier to switch between moves and get a higher combo, you can also tweak your grabs by hold the right or the left triggers, which can up to more point but can make it a bit harder to land a trick. Sometimes the controls can feel sloppy and it makes it really hard to land trick sometimes, but you will get over it sooner or later. Sometimes you can over spin making it frustrating again, and sometimes you can always land a back flip which is another frustrating thing but all in all the controls can be good at times when they want to be. I found this game to be one of the most amazing looking games I have ever played. At times there can be a little slowdown but it doesn't bother me too much at all. The graphics are stunning to say the least, you have these huge and vast mountain runs that take you down the paths of snow or ice, ice is hard to control on it really gets to me but it's realistic. As you run down the mountain you might be running through powdered snow, and let me tell you it is amazing to look at. It feels as if your going through real snow, it has those little sparkles from the sun and it looks so soft, so soft that you want to lay in it. The levels can be a bit confined at times, but other levels are just huge and full of power. The tree's in this game are beautiful as well, as realistic as your could have it. I have had a few slowdowns as I said before, in the manner too much was going on at once I guess and it slowed down for me and it really kind of sucked. Also I have had collision problems, I once went through a tree, yay. And one time I just kind of fell down instead of jump I laughed. Yes these are the only problems that I have had with the graphics, other than that they are amazing and epic and they are worth feasting your eyes upon, it is like feeding your eyes with edible gold, yum. Everything in this game sounds amazing, the music is just amazing, and the amount of song they have in it is just overwhelming to say the least, and all the boarding sounds are all realistic in every manner. There are over 200 hundred tracks of music in this game, you have all of your rock needs; it is really amazing that they would put that much music into a game. Not all of it is great but they do have their little quirks that fit it just fine. All of the boarding sounds, sound just as they would in life I couldn't explain it any better. There are Snowboarders, Media people, and random people scattered through out the levels, and everything they says is pretty cool, "Let's see you tear it up," as one of them, they are done well. There are some wonderfully done environment sounds and they really attract me to this game, making it seem is if though you were on the mountain hearing that wonderful breeze, making life a little easier. This game is full of content, for how long it takes to become the #1 pro snowboarder. You can upgrade you stats, and once they are up you can viciously tear down anyone on the mountain, and you can get heaps and heaps of clothes, boards, and gear its all quite amazing. The levels are huge, and massive. And everything is full. But the one thing that lead it down was the amount of customization put into building your character, what am I talking about there is no damn customization! Alls you really do it choose your character face and that’s it between what 10 faces, it really kills that part of the game for me in a lot of ways. But the game is worth its low price of $5.99 and if it were $50 it would still be worth it, so check your bargain bin. Overall Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding has to be the best snowboarding game I have ever played, and I will gladly love to get the 2nd one, when I can. 
