Had promise but not quite there yet.
Amped
Format - XBOX
Developer - Microsoft
Story - You start off the career portion of the game as a low-classed snowboarder trying to make your way to the top. Basic, simple, effective. At the beginning of the game, you have very little gear and clothing, reflecting your “I’m a poor high-school drop-out with no money or class” attitude of a wannabe-snowboarder. Or it could just be to make you unlock more stuff by working for it. Who knows? As you progress through the career mode, your rank will go up by getting high-scores and high media-scores. Getting high-scores and high media-scores unlocks sponsor runs, which increase your popularity in the world of snowboarding. The bruised, bleeding and swelling world of snowboarding. Lucky you. Characters - Your character is a no name nobody who you name. You build him up and make him popular. On the way through the game, you encounter several pro boarders, such as Jeremy Jones, Mikey LeBlanc, Bobby Meeks and several others. You have to beat them in free-runs down certain slopes, getting higher scoring moves then them. Other than that, there isn’t really any other characters in the game. Be warned though. The slopes are crowded with more than just you boarding out there. This can make you want to give up boarding and curse like a sailor in frustration with the constant clashing of characters bumping into each other and falling over. Multiplayer - Up to 4 players ca play in multiplayer mode and you can choose any of the career characters or the pro boarders. Multiplayer games include high-score, which is pretty self-explanatory unless your from Arkansas and can’t count. Best trick is obvious and if you can’t figure that one out, how the hell are you managing to read this? Media points is the highest media-score all together. King Of The Hill is the highest scoring trick on *gasp* each hill and jump point. Who would have figured that one out? You can also dictate time-limit, style of scoring such as Aerials only or Rails only and modifications, such as the game is over when you crash for the first time or you die if you don’t trick every 10 seconds. With all of these options, multiplayer is varied and fun, however there is no split-screen multiplayer and instead it is done in turns on a single-screen, which defeats the purpose of multiplayer mode when you have to take turns. Gameplay/Control - Prepare for anger management class’. The control layout is very different, with tricks being done by the right analogy stick. This takes a little getting used to but once you do, it’s pretty easy to get a hang of it. The other main problem is the glitches. Graphical glitches cause hell in the gameplay, making it impossible to do anything properly and a damn chore just to get going downhill again. The problems here are: you can’t score by going uphill then downhill, and when you can’t re-position yourself to go downhill, this becomes a pain in the frozen ass. Also, crashing into objects is bound to happen continuously, and when this cause’s graphical glitches making it impossible to move, position or even get up without falling back down, you may just want to break a snowboard over someone’s head. If it weren’t for these major problems, the gameplay would be great, especially given the ease of addictiveness and difficulty to master, but with all these problems, you become temped to get this game a psychiatrist, or yourself one when you lose it.
Graphics - The graphics of the characters are great, especially the added clothing and animation effects on the clothing. The character models are all simple yet effective and character animation during tricks is realistic and works very well, especially during spins, which gives you the full sense of speed of the game. The clothing and gear look amazing and the small animation added to different clothes really add a lot. It’s the little things that matter, and the small swaying of a loose strap on your jeans is a demonstration of this perfectly. There are some graphical glitches, with vanishing into objects after crashing, which can detract from the game and become very off-putting, especially when it happens very often. Try not to crash, not only because it will affect your score but too avoid these annoying glitches. The graphics of the courses are ok. They are nothing special but aren’t terrible either. The snow effects, which should be a huge important thing for any snowboarding game, are piss poor. It’s like watching someone scribble with a crayola dipped in ink when your snowboard moves. It’s awful and distracting, especially when it can often times take up the bottom portion of your screen. The graphics, all in all, are a mixed bag. They could have used some tweeking on the snow effects and fixed the glitches, and maybe the game would be better. As it is, the glitches in graphics cause so much problems that it just makes the game worse and worse.
Sound - With 150 songs by various indie music bands, featuring reggae, punk, emo, rock and others, the sound is amazing. You won’t pay one bit of attention to any other part of the sound excepting the music. Couple this with the fact that the game will also play customized and uploaded soundtracks that you have saved on your XBOX hard drive, meaning you can listen to whatever you want and as many songs as you want.
Value/Replayability - Career mode is very challenging until you master the controls and at often times, you may fid yourself determined to not move on to the next course until you have done everything there is to do in every course. There is tons of clothing and gear to unlock in career mode, along with exploring for snowmen and crashing into them to unlock more stuff. With 11 courses based on real-life snowboarding mountain’s, and multiple paths down each mountain, the game will keep you coming back until you get enough courage to go break a leg trying to do this stuff in real life.
Originality - No. Just no. Use your head.
Appeal - If you like realistic sports games and have waited for a decent realistic snowboarding game, this should appeal to you. If your tired of having to escape avalanches and having to ride through a neon Las Vegas looking town at night and would rather go for, well, snow and trees, this should appeal. OVERALL SCORE - 6.5
OVERALL OPINION - If not for the major glitches in graphics and gameplay, this game would be great fun, but the game was put out with these glitches in the game and this makes it impossible not to hate the game when it glitches up all the time. If there was more time in development to iron out these glitches, then it would have a higher score, but as it is, it’s just a bug-filled game that showed a lot of promise