"Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding" is a snowboarding game meant for freestyling and tricks, not for racing down a
This game, "Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding" has plenty of features for its gameplay. “Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding has a career mode, a quick start mode, a multiplayer mode, and a couple other features. The only mode I have played is the Career mode, because it seems to be the only mode that’s important or good. In the Career mode, you start out as a snowboarder with a not-so-good ranking in the world. Your goal is to go from number 126 in the world to number 1. It is a pretty good idea for a game. But, it takes forever for you to beat it. I have currently spent about twelve hours on this game, and I am only ranked number 90 in the world. There are five ways to improve your world ranking. The first way you can go up is to accomplish high score challenges. You must score a certain amount of points in one run to accomplish and beat the high score challenge. Beating one high score challenge puts you up one world ranking, and get one skill point to improve yourself. There are five skills to improve upon: spin, balance, jump, speed, and switch. The more skill points you have in a category, the better you are at that. This is a good way for you to choose if you want to be better at jumps, or rails.
The second way to improve your world ranking is to accomplish a media challenge. In order to accomplish or beat a media challenge is to score a certain amount of points in front of a cameraman. Beating a media challenge will put you up one world ranking, and will give you something to put in your scrapbook. Your scrapbook is full of things, such as pictures and newsletters of you. It is a nice addition to the Career mode, especially when it is full at the end of the game.
The third way to improve your world ranking is to accomplish a sponsor challenge. To accomplish a sponsor challenge, you must do tricks that the sponsor likes, such as spins, flips, grabs, or rails. The sponsor must be amped by the end of the run, or you don’t accomplish it. If you accomplish a sponsor challenge, you will go up one world ranking, and will get clothing and/ or gear from the sponsor.
The fourth way to improve your world ranking is to accomplish a pro challenge. In a pro challenge, you follow a professional snowboarder. You must do a trick in the exact same place the professional does a trick, and score higher on your trick than the professional does. You must beat the professional in every spot to win the pro challenge. When you accomplish a pro challenge, you improve one world ranking, and get different things. You can learn a new trick, get some new gear, or get a skill point.
The last way to improve your world ranking is to accomplish an explore challenge. In an explore challenge, you must find eight snowmen throughout the mountain, and knock them over. This was obviously meant to make the game more fun, but I think it was very frustrating and useless. For example, on the mountain Brighton 2, I have to jump onto a building just to reach a snowman. The only jump near the building is about fifty feet away, and is about a one foot tall jump. So, you must have an incredibly high jump skill to accomplish this. Since I balance out my skill points to all five categories, I will have to do this a long time later, when my jump skill is improved. Also, the snowmen are all over the mountains in hard to reach/ find places. It is really nothing but a waste of time, and frustration. The Quick Start mode is just to let you practice your skills, and the multiplayer mode is terrible. The point of a multiplayer mode is to have a bunch of players to play at the same time. The multiplayer mode isn’t split screen, and it only lets one player go down a run at a time. So, all the players would have to watch an other player to finish their run, before they can do it themselves. The multiplayer is just a waste of time. Also, it would have been better to have XBOX Live for “Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding” (although it doesn’t affect me, as I don’t have XBOX Live).
But, the fact that this game is about the moves and tricks, not the race is great. All of the snowboarding games made so far are about racing to the bottom of the mountain. “Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding” is about making great tricks and doing what you want on the snowboard. It is all about freestyle, and snowboarders would love it.
Overall, the gameplay of the Career mode is pretty good, but everything else is a waste of time. Also, the explore challenge is just pointless, an the game takes a very long time to beat. The fact that this game is about the tricks and freestyle, not the racing is good. GRAPHICS: The graphics of “Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding” aren’t spectacular, or even very good. The snow graphics are pretty good, but the color isn’t right. The coloring makes the snow look very unreal. When you are moving with the snowboard, the tracks and the flying snow look very good, and pretty realistic. But, when falling on the snow, the graphics just screw up. Your falling down itself doesn’t look right. You fall at odd angles, and you go right through the snow, causing the graphics of the place you fell on to look terrible. Also, you can sometimes go through solid objects, such as logs and trees. The graphics of the object when you go through them look bad. Also, when you slowly pass by any object, the graphics of that object look weird. When the object is right behind you, and you are barely moving, or not moving at all, you can see right through the object. You can see the object, but it is translucent. The graphics of the distant background look very real, but distant objects on the run ahead, such as the ski lift or trees look very bad. They seem to shimmer, and are not detailed.
The graphics of the snowboarder aren’t that bad; the snowboarder and other people look pretty detailed, and their clothing and gear look real. The clothes flap in the wind, and look right. But, the movements of the snowboarder don’t look smooth. They are forced, sometimes freezing and sometimes very quick.
Overall, the graphics could have been better. The snow, snowboarder, and gear look pretty realistic, but movements looked bad, and the fact that the graphics of objects were terrible when going near it wasn’t good. Also, going through solid objects is a big factor. The graphics could have been much better; this game could have been made on the original Playstation easily. The graphics were not very good.
SOUND: The sound of the game was very good. First of all, the music was very good. There were many different styles of music to listen to. “Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding might have the most music in a video game ever created. You can listen to the genres of music you want to listen to, such as rock, punk, reggae, or rap. Also, you can play your own music for the game. Any music you save on the XBOX Hard Drive can be played in the game. Basically, you can listen to any music you want.
The voices were pretty good, but you could tell only person did the voices. The photographers, sponsors, and snowboarders all had the same voice. But, the phrases spoken were pretty thoughtful. They said different things at different times, but more things could have been said. After failingly repeatedly to accomplish a very hard trick, it gets very frustrating when the only thing you hear is “You suck!!!”. The sounds of cutting through the snow and grinding on rail were pretty good, but too loud. They make grinding sound like one hundred people are scratching a board at once. The sound is too loud; it should have been made quieter. The sound of falling and hitting things were very realistic. Most of the sounds of the game were very good.
Another good thing was that the snowmen could make noises. If you were starting to get close to a snowman, you would hear it say “Hey, amigo.” If you are getting too far from a snowman, it would laugh, and when you are very close to a snowman, you would hear it making a tune. It is pretty helpful.
Overall, the sound of the game was great. You could listen to any music you wanted, the music of the game were pretty good, the sound effects of grinding and hitting objects were good, and there were some good phrases spoken. But, the sound effects were too loud, and there could have been more things said. The sound of the game was one of the best features. VALUE:
The value of this game is pretty high. You can do many things in “Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding.” First of all, there are the many times you go down the mountain, trying to accomplish the different challenges on each mountain. There is not much of a chance you would accomplish both the media and high score challenges by the first three or four runs. There are also the pro and sponsor challenges, which would take a couple of runs to accomplish. Then , there is the explore challenge, which would take many runs to find all eight snowmen, which are spread throughout the mountain on different runs.
Secondly, there are different runs for each course. One might be better for you than the other. Try all of the runs a couple of times, and see what is the best for what challenge. One might have more jumps, which could be better, or one might have more rails, which you might like more than jumps. Also, one run might have more cameras than the other, which would make it easier to score media points.
Third of all, there are many different ways to go down a run. You can go down a different route each time to see what route gives you the most points. Or, you can make a map of the mountain and see what way would be the best way down the mountain. Lastly, you might want to get a better high score on a certain run. For example, you might have passed all three high score challenges, but you have 156,000 points on that run. You might want to do it again for 200,000 points as your new high score. You can do the same with media challenges. Also, you might want to do perfect on a sponsor or pro challenge (I have yet tried to do that so far, so I want to know what happens if you do).
Also, you can buy “Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding” at EB Games or Game Stop for about six dollars. This game certainly is not worth more than about fifteen dollars, but for six dollars, it is a great deal. But, there is one problem: the Career mode of “Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding” takes so long to beat, you might not want to play it for a long time because it can get you so frustrated when what you expect to happen doesn’t, and for its length.
Overall for value, this game is pretty good. There are many reasons for you to play this game over and over again. There are the different challenges, your own high scores, to find out the many ways to go down a run, and to see which run or mountain is the best for a certain challenge. But, this game is so long and frustrating, you might not want to play it for a long time. This game is worth its price, but not really worth more than that.
REVIEWER’S TILT:
Overall, this game was pretty average. It had a good idea for a game, with the fact it was based on tricks instead of racing down a mountain. It has a very good Career mode, but no other mode is good at all. The graphics are poor, unless you count the snowboarder and your gear. The objects ahead look bad, and you go through objects. But, the sound of the game is pretty good, with its good music, your own soundtrack, and the phrases spoken by the cameramen and other snowboarders. It has many reasons to replay the game, with the fact you can watch what you did, there are over one hundred challenges to complete, there are your own high scores to beat, and there are many different ways to go down a run. This game is not very good, and is very frustrating and long, but it is very worth its six dollar price. Anybody who is a snowboarding fan, or is looking for something to keep them occupied or “amped” should buy this game.