The snowboarding genre is one that hasn’t seen a great deal of love. Cool Boarders started a trend by being solid, and then every man and his dog has snowboarding on the brain. Fast forward, and the heat has died down, leaving currently only the very solid Shaun White Snowboarding, and Amped 3 – which is a tad long in the tooth, now.
So, it’s about time that we had another to heat up the competition somewhat. However, this initial release of Stoked most certainly isn’t it.
From the outset, Stoked looks like a game lacking in features. Whilst rider design isn’t a massive priority when it comes to snowboarding, it would have been nice to have been able to select from more than the limited selection of relatively generic clothing that are available – especially since a large portion of the in-game sponsors (who appear EVERYWHERE – sometimes with little reason) actually make snowboarding clothes. As I say, this isn’t a huge gripe – so we’ll move on.
You begin on a Chilean mountain, with snowboarding star Wolle Nylen guiding you through the control system with about as much charisma as a dead dog. Now I’m sure that Wolle is a great guy, but he sounds as if he wants to kill himself when doing the vocals here, and I don’t think I’d be exaggerating if I said that this is one of the worst voiceover performances I’ve heard. Ever. But, with the basics down, you head out on to the mountain itself (after choosing your dropoff point) and are away.
Initially, you’ll be impressed by Stoked’s graphics. There are times when some very, very average effects and terrible texture blurring come into play, but for each one of those occasions, there’s a cool feature or two that makes up for it. Your snowtrails hanging around for what seems like forever would be one, with the superb lighting and snowstorm effects being others. These – and other nice little touches – push the atmosphere to the max and give you a really good feeling about the game, and make you want to unlock the other mountains and try every possible dropoff point just to see what you can see.
However, the game options available to you will knock that idea on the head pretty swiftly. You see, there’s only so many times that the atmosphere can make up for the fact that the gameplay can be extremely, extremely dull and repetitive. Just to clarify, there’s NO RACING here. At all. There isn’t even a time trial to be found. The challenges that exist consist of points targets and trick-mimicking events only, although there’s a checklist of targets to beat for each pro in order to unlock more professional advice. The main issue with this is that the game never tells you when you’ve completed an entry on the list – so you constantly have to check back to make sure that Stoked has recognised that your boardslide with 720 Indy into a Method Air actually qualifies. The reason you’re checking, is that the game tends to fail to notice that you’ve completed an entry on the checklist – pretty much when it feels like it.
Due to the lack of varying challenges, Stoked gets old – fast. Yes, you can play on and unlock your helicopter licence, which allows you to fly around the mountain and drop your rider anywhere at all. But, that doesn’t mean that the game is actually any the better once you’re on the boarsd. You land, ride down the mountain, bust a few tricks on the way, do a challenge (mimick a trick or beat a set trick score) if you run into one and then…stop and go back to the helicopter to do it again. It may be realistic to an extent, but that doesn’t mean that its fun. You’re sitting there in a warm room in your house, with a controller in hand, which takes 90% of the fun out of leisure snowboarding. The fun of snowboarding comes from the feeling you get when you’re rushing down a mountain with nothing but your skills to save you and nothing between you and the ground but a thin slice of wood. Stoked – as the snowboarding games before it did – therefore needs those unrealistic events that maybe don’t make any realistic sense, or some mountains with ridiculously sharp drops and over-the-top sections. In short, Stoked needs to learn how to be a GAME, rather than trying to be an out-and-out simulation with some game-style menus stuck in front of it.
This is a bit of a shame, especially when you consider that Stoked’s trick system actually works really well, with the controls from EA’s SKATE series being liberally used. Flicking your right stick up performs an Ollie, whilst pulling the stick back and then flicking forward performs a higher one. Grabs are controlled by your triggers (and right stick to modify), with spins being passed on to your left analogue stick. It all works fluidly and does the business. Also, the effects that the weather, time of day and snow depth have on the speed and control that you have is impressive to say the least, although many won’t bother hanging around to experience anything more than the initial state of the mountain.
What really galls is that the publisher is releasing the game’s sequel – Stoked: Big Air – in the US in November. Given that this review is being written in October, that seems a little harsh from any paying customer’s point of view. The new game will feature racing, new mountains, a new lighting engine and faster gameplay. Make of that what you will – but I say that it only gives everyone even less of a reason to buy Stoked than they already had. The sequel’s promised new features SOUND like they’ll turn the game into a worthwhile proposition as even if you don’t get bored with the repetition, there aren’t a massive amount of things to do in this original title. So, new mountains will be a boost, and racing will be something of a required addition. I’d advise you to wait and see if that’s the case because as it stands, Stoked doesn’t really cut the mustard.
