by I Commentator I

© 2010 Declan S:

Stoked, of the “stoked rider” videogame series by Bongfish Interactive Entertainment (Published by Destineer games), promised to revolutionize the snowboarding genre – but does it deliver?

Popularized in the late 90’s, Snowboarding games have come a long way since the likes of the popular 1080° snowboarding or SSX. Whilst games such as those had a strong arcade feel, the snowboarding genre of today is focusing more and more on realism.

Stoked sets out to do this in a number of ways through a mix of including a handful of real life snowboarding pros, real sponsors and more interestingly – the “real weather experience”.

This gameplay mechanic is perhaps Stoked’s most appealing asset.  The different levels of snow will not only have an effect on the player’s visibility, but also on the amount of powder on the mountains. With high levels of snow, the ground is clearer, whilst when it is not, rocks may become exposed which add more hazards to your run.

To say that Stoked starts off slowly would be an understatement. The controls are reminiscent of popular skating game Skate 2, and just like Skate 2 the controls may be frustrating at first, with a totally different trick only 45° on the right analog stick. Whilst admittedly you do improve over the course of the game, this still is a large (unavoidable) source of frustration late into the game.

As well as this, the game suffers another major flaw:  unlike games such as Shaun White or Skate, instructions are not given as to how to do a particular grab or trick. Whilst this may not seem like a major issue, there are over 50 different renditions of grabs, slides and tricks, and memorizing these all is not a simple task for anyone.  Travelling down a mountain at high-speed going through gates just exacerbates the issue.

Sure they do offer a “Grab bible” in the menu, but it is unforgivable for players to have to pause and check their menu as many as 5-10 times in some challenges. As well as this, instructions for grinds are not even given clearly, and much stress was to be had trying to work out what a “BS Tailslide” was.

In terms of longevity the game offers 5 mountain locations, and for each mountain there are multiple Starting points – all offering 10 challenges. This means there are roughly 60 basic challenges per location and literally hundreds of challenges to complete.

On top of this there are media challenges, sponsorship challenges, Pro challenges and a major event on each mountain too. However the major downside to all this is that the majority of challenges are all too similar: either complete a particular trick/s and land, score a certain amount of points with X trick or finally perform a variety of different tricks as they appear on-screen.

While these do fluctuate in difficulty, they become indistinguishable and repetitive. Luckily for the player, the progression of the game means that you do not have to beat even half of all these challenges in order to become “the ultimate snowboarder”.  As well as this – use of the helicopter can be unlocked on every mountain allowing players to choose where to start their own run. However the game does lack a “session marker” feature, meaning players must rely on auto save points as they go down the mountain.

The leaderboards for Stoked also seem lazy compared to its closest competition Amped 3 and Shaun White.  Whilst both those titles have a vast number of leaderboards for all the challenges in the game, Stoked limits its leaderboards to only 2 out of every 10 challenges on a mountain.  As well, leaderboards for the main events can only be posted once per week.

I cannot help but feel its lack of extensive leaderboards is a bad mistake. As well as this, there are no yearly, or even monthly, leaderboards available – all leaderboards being reset weekly. This means that what leaderboards the game does have are not competitive enough anyway and a major disappointment for any score based game.

The Xbox Live mulitplayer features in Stoked are vast, with up to 8 players being allowed to compete on one mountain at once. And whilst it is disappointing that the session leader cannot change the mountain without closing down the game and starting another, Stoked does provide many unique Live opportunities such as races and tricking competitions against one another. With a stronger community this could have been a lot of fun, yet to enjoy this you really do need to get a couple friends online and organize it between yourselves.

In conclusion, Stoked seems to focus more on gimmicks such as snow sticking to your rider, being able to take camera pictures and its environment changing as you ride, as opposed to providing a well-rounded snowboarding experience. The game in a way seems 80% done.

With a few simple changes such as session markers, trick instructions on-screen, better leaderboards and a bit more variety in its challenges, Stoked could be a great snowboarding game. Whilst missing those things, it remains a fun experience, and will still be enjoyed by fans of snowboarding games regardless.

©2010 Declan S:

“7/10

Filed under: 3rd Party Games, Console gaming, Xbox 360, Xbox 360 Game Reviews, Xbox 360 News Tagged: | Bongfish, Bongfish interactive entertainment, BS Tailslide, Getting Stoked, gettingstoked, Grab bible, Shaun White, Skate, Snowboarding, snowboarding games, Stoked Review, stoked reviews, Xbox Live mulitplayer