Shaun White Snowboarding

Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft
Genre: Sports (snowboarding)
Release Date: November 16, 2008
Platforms: Playstation 2, Playstation 3, Playstation Portable, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, Wii, PC
ESRB: T - Teen

Reviewer: Eric

One thing missing in the sports genre was snowboarding. The last snowboarding genre took a turn for the worst so we were left hanging with nothing. All that is about the change with Shan White Snowboarding or is Shaun White actually going to show us why snowboarding is best kept on the slopes?

Instead of playing as Shaun White, the story has you playing as your created snowboarder. The character creation is beyond terrible; the game pretty much makes the character for you with the little options they have to offer. There is no way you are going down these slopes as yourself, you are going down as one boring son of a bitch.

Any way once you made your character you find yourself under Shaun Whites wing. This guy is a riot! Along with is stereotypical friends you have to collect coins for Mister White. Sounds like a lot of fun but it isn’t. Finding these coins is annoying and boring as hell. If you can’t find these coins then the rest of the game will never happen. After I played this game I think I would have not found those coins.

After you progress in the story you will notice something else about the game. You are doing more walking than actual snowboarding. Most of the items you need to find, even those damn coins, are out of reach. This game should have been called “Shaun White Snow Walking”. I would have given the game more respect if the title didn’t have snowboarding in it.

Ubisoft took the Skate approach with the controls. These controls don’t fit this game at all. It is so damn hard to build up speed to do any tricks. Plus when you do get enough speed it seems like your fingers get all tied up in the stupid control layout. Don’t even bother trying to jump on any object to grind because it is not possible. Shaun White Snowboarding makes the last Tony Hawk game look amazing.

The graphics are pretty and that is thanks to the Assassin’s Creed engine. I did however notice a huge amount of glitches and that is something Assassin’s Creed’s engine did not have. There are numerous clipping problems, ranging from body parts going through rocks and the ground. Not only that, sometimes if you fall the screen gets real messed up. Maybe this game should have been called Shaun White Freefalling. Do you get the drift with all of the name changes yet?

Sport games are known for their music and Shaun White fails in this category. Some of the songs on here are decent but there are not too man tracks at all. You can put on your favorite track if you want; they made it easy to do this. But there is no point since that track will come back on in less than 30 minutes.

I did find something good about this game. Online play is decent. There are never any slow downs, the loading times are not any longer and you can do whatever you want. Ubisoft didn’t take anything out of the online play either, which may or may not be a good thing.

Final Verdict
Snowboarding to find coins to start the game is not my cup of tea. Out of all the extreme sport games Shaun White Snowboarding takes way too long to officially start the game? The controls are way too clunky to even want to find all the coins. This game is not going to revive snowboarding games; this game is going to make sure that this extreme sport stays on the television.

Rating
5.50 out of 10

Shaun White Snowboarding Trailer