If you played Tony Hawks Underground before this game, you will certainly enjoy Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding.
If you played Tony Hawks Underground before this game, you will certainly enjoy Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding.
Amped is not your typical snowboarding game. It’s not about getting to the bottom of the course in the fastest time or racing against other people in an “arcadish” type of way. Amped is geared towards freestyle snowboarding and the style and artistry that it represents. Cruising down a mountain side, looking for obstacles to challenge, and taking them head on with ease giving you bragging rights of “King Of The Hill”! I think that in some regards it could even be considered a simulation.
Amped is a fairly straightforward game to learn the basics. Controls are easy and basic skills & tricks are shown on the bottom of the screen e.g one tip I normally see is Press B to jib or rail slide. But, as you advance through Amped, you will find difficulties to complete the section of the level. If you think you suck at this game, don't worry. I couldn't get past Gunny's Gulch for about 3 months. There are other tricks to learn, which are very hard, e.g Switch Rodeo 360 or something like that.
It is fun to play this game, especially with Multiplayer and all that crap. The first levels are easy to complete. It is easy to play at first, but, when you can't beat a mission, it gets boring. Make sure you have a FAQ/Walkthrough(s) ready, not to mention cheats.
Handy Tip: Enable the cheats.
The root of this game starts off like most other games of this type, Career Mode. When you start career mode, you’ll pick your character’s body style, clothes and snowboard equipment just like other titles. You also pick what skills your character starts with. There are five basic skills: spin, balance, jump, speed and switch. Once you start gaining points and winning the different challenges, you will receive more points to improve your skills even more. Winning challenges also improves your ranking among other snowboarders.
Beating each challenge on any given course is the main goal of the game. There are five main challenges. In the High Score challenge, all you are going for is pure points. An amount of points is set and you’ll have to beat it. Pretty basic, but fun to do nevertheless. In the media challenge, you go around the course looking for photographers to show off in front of. They hang out around the jumps, half pipes, rails and other obstacles throughout the mountain. The fancier you get the better. Screw up and they’ll let you know. In the sponsor challenge, you’ll have to pull off a bunch of tricks that the sponsor likes. If you do well you’ll get free stuff. There is also a beat the pro challenge which guides you through a course that asks for tricks at specific points. The strangest challenge to me (and one of the hardest) is the explore challenge. To complete it, all you have to do is find these angry looking snowmen around the mountain. Sounds easy? It isn’t once you have tried it! I consider myself "accidentally" beating the game. My TV is small and crap, I couldn't see the score. But, I was surprised at what I saw as the result.
In today’s era of video games graphics are a big deal to many while others don’t notice it as much. Noticing the graphics in Amped will not be a problem. At first I wasn’t that impressed because of my aggravation with learning how to play the game. When I watched a replay of a run I had, I could concentrate on all the fine details of the game. Those of you who have been to a ski area will know how drastic lighting and environmental conditions can change. Amped captures this almost perfectly. The lighting and texturing are beautiful. Snow can consist of so many different textures but Amped recreates all of them. One thing that caught my eye that may be overlooked by some is the look of the “groomed snow”. This is snow that has been groomed by a special tractor to pack it down. When you take a look at it closely, you’ll see the different shadows in it. The snow falling around you looks as real as can be. It blows in different directions and falls at a believable rate. I guess this should bring up some frame rate issues.
A while back, many were saying that Amped looked too choppy and slow. Well if there were any problems wit this, they must have been fixed. While playing the game, you will notice how smooth and fluid everything moves. It moves at the perfect pace. When you think of the detail that is on a mountain and through in falling snow and other snowboarders, the complexity can be overwhelming. When traveling over different ground textures on the mountain such as ice and powder, I noticed the most realistic change in speed I have seen in a snowboarding game. Watching your shadow get closer to you as you fall to the ground in a plume of snow is breathtaking. Amped handles all of these issues without any slowdown in frame rate, period. Wondering about frame rates in this game should not be a concern to any gamer thinking of getting this title. There really isn’t much to say bad about the graphics at all. Still, nothing groundbreaking. Possibly, some of the smaller details could have been done a little cleaner.
As I said (or did I? I can't remember), if you want crystal clear replays, make sure you see your replay. It even is good, with a small, crap TV like mine.
The sound in a game can make or break it. Does the sound get repetitive? Sick of all the corny one liners? Does the music hurt your ears? None of these questions should be asked of Amped. Why not? I never hear songs get repeated again. When you think of it, how many sound effects can you have in a game of this type? It’s not like a shooter with gunshots and vehicles coming from all directions. As far as sound effects go, Amped’s answer to this was not to over do it with unneeded sounds.
If you play the game without any music, you’ll notice what I’m talking about. You won’t hear many sounds because that is what it’s like snowboarding! It can actually become very quite sometimes. This absence of sound will occasionally be overtaken by a distant “swoosh” of another boarder and then gently disappear into the mountain side. Another cool effect was the sound of your board against the groomed snow and the ice. I can tell you from much experience (anyone from Pennsylvania will back me up as ice is all we have to ski on!) that this is the exact sound that ice makes.
When you take out all the graphic, audio and playability criteria that there is in a game, you’ll notice that there are some other minor features that make a game interesting. There are many of these “minor” features in Amped. I really liked how they added the Monty Python type cartoons at some key points in the game. They didn’t have to add have them but it’s these little bonus features that add up. Winning that hot dog after a challenge might give you a little chuckle. Then again, it might not. Having your favorite pictures saved in an album is another nice feature.
Amped also allows you to save your favorite runs. This is a basic feature these days and gamers have come to expect it. Unfortunately, Amped provides only a basic movie play back. I would have liked to have been given control of a few cameras with different angles of the action. A possible edit feature would also have been cool.
Don't give up at the beginning. That is my tip of this review. When you master the hards and the basics, you will find the game highly addictive. That's my overall.