Reviewed: November 24, 2008
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud
Publisher
Ubisoft
Developer
Ubisoft Montreal
Released: October 28, 2008
Genre: Sports
Players: 1-4
7
7
7
5
6.5
Supported Features:
Shaun White Snowboarding on the Nintendo DS had such promise with its unique and very easy touch screen control and great tunes but in the end it is just too short. You can easily complete this in one sitting going from the simple tutorial type start to the race against Shaun White himself. It takes about three to four hours to go from first turning on the game and finding out just how easy and forgiving Shaun White Snowboarding is for us amateur X sports athletes to racing on Shaun’s private spot. The controls are very easy with the stylus controlling speed and tricks while the D pad grabs the board in different spots.
To perform a trick simply go downhill with a little forward movement on the touch screen and do a quick down and up movement on the screen to jump. Once in the air you can move the stylus all over the screen to do various maneuvers but watch your landing. Once you’re about to hit the ground simply return the stylus to the board for a perfect landing. You can also perform grinding on a wide variety of rails on the mountain routes by simply jumping toward the rail and using the small meter to stay on the rail for balance. A meter will pop up and sway along with your on screen character and once it goes too far to one side you fall off.
Grabbing the board and doing some other fancy tricks in air and on the ground are done with the D pad or four buttons and the shoulder buttons for some more inventive stunts. In the end stunts are much easier to perform than I have seen with other extreme sports games on other systems and the game is very forgiving in counting them as complete. Once you perform certain stunts and maneuvers you open up more passes and routes on the four mountains and once you have completed them all you race side by side with Shaun White. While this may sound great it’s merely a quick run trying to out trick him as he races along doing his own stunts.
On each run there are decals which give slight variations on tricks that you can slap onto your board from the 42 possible decals littered around the courses. Certain decals will give you more speed while others will give better tricks so before each race you can try your luck on each course with a decal appropriate to the course style. The courses you run at the beginning are pretty standard straight runs and you do get more moguls, turns and obstacles in later courses but they do not get very tough or eventful. More effort was placed on other parts of the game but in the end it is a pretty good well rounded game with some pretty good graphics and music.
The effects sound good and the graphics look good on the Nintendo DS with plenty of visual warning for upcoming obstacles like rails or sharp turns so things looming in the course are not suddenly upon you. The slightly blocky graphics like your character are fine when you consider how smooth the action is while playing so the game does well overall. Music is from some popular groups like Incubus, Sweet and Run-DMC but the songs are shortened versions so you may get tired of them sooner than you would hope. The snowboarding sounds are pretty good and everything mixes to create a pretty good feel for the game but it would have been nicer for full length songs so you don’t get tired of the music so quickly.
But if the game only lasts four or so hours I cannot really see getting too tired of Shaun White Snowboarding, so they may have done you a favor here. It is possibly the only very disappointing feature in the game with such a short run through all the courses and you would have to purposely miss things to make it longer. If you wanted to make it last you would actually have to not do tricks and such in order to not advance but it is so easy to perform them all without really even trying. This has to be the easiest game I have played in order to actually perform stunts and make them stick.
From motorcycle and skate boarding games you usually have certain timing and button combinations in order to actually perform certain tricks in other games but not here. You can scribble away on the touch screen after a quick jump and you will invariably perform some kind of stunt counting toward your goals of moving on. Shaun White Snowboarding on the Nintendo DS is probably a kiddy pool game compared to others but it is still fun enough on the DS to include as a possible purchase. If you like snowboarding games but have the style and skill of an all thumbs player this may be just right for you.
I enjoyed playing Shaun White Snowboarding and it was easy enough for me to master in a short time even with my all thumbs game playing. Shaun White Snowboarding is a pretty decent game and gives enough of a challenge for beginners to find it fun and exciting but may be a bit too easy for anyone looking for a greater challenge.
