Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding

"The most balanced, and as a whole, best snowboarding game on Xbox."

Introduction:

Years ago, when 1080 Snowboarding launched with the Nintendo 64, I fell in love with snowboarding games. I'm an avid snowboarder myself, and found the game to be almost as good as actually ripping the slopes in real life. 1080 Snowboarding remained my favorite snowboarding game for a few years, until Rippin' Riders came out for the Dreamcast. The game was fun, and really hard. Was it ever hard. I eventually mastered the game, and thought that no snowboarding game would ever top it.

I was wrong.

Gameplay: 9/10

Amped's gameplay is what really makes it my favorite snowboarding game. Developers always seem to have a hard time finding the perfect balance between too easy and too hard in their effort to create the most realistic snowboarding simulation possible. With Amped, the developers got it just right. If you're looking for a realistic snowboarding game, Amped is the one to pick up. If you're trying to land a jump at an angle that nobody could pull off in real life, then you won't pull it off either. However, if you line up your landing just right, you'll stick it and score a ton of points. Amped isn't overly easy like SSX Tricky or Transworld Snowboarding, where you literally have to land on your head if you don't want to stick a landing.

I mentioned scoring points. This is where Amped really innovates. There are two main ways to score points. The first is to land as many grinds, flips, grabs, etc as possible before reaching the end of the course. If you beat certain pre-set high scores, you are awarded skill points, which can be distributed into your character's different statistics. These statistics range from ''Spin'' (how fast they spin), to ''Balance'' (how easy it is to balance when doing grinds). The second main way to score points is to earn media points. As you're careening down the slopes, red circles show from afar where photographers are standing. As you get closer, you'll see the photographers. If you perform tricks near them, you'll recieve a certain amount of media points depending on how good your tricks were. Earning more points puts you closer to your goal of being the best snowboarder in the world. Perhaps the only bad thing about Amped's gameplay is that some of the challenges can get really hard.

Besides these High Score and Media challenges, there are also more challenges like Sponsor and Pro. I won't give away everything, so you can explore those by yourself.

Graphics: 9/10

Amped has some amazing graphics. You'll notice the amazing lighting effects right at the start. It will take a little longer to realize how detailed the graphics are. The framerate is absolutely rock solid and never slows down. The animations are very smooth and ultra-realistic. For example, you won't see a rider switch from a regular to goofy footed stance in half a second like in other games. He'll have to (and actually will) twist his entire body and strain to turn the board around. This attention to detail is what elevates Amped above most snowboarding games. Overall, the graphics are superb. My only beefs are that you'll sometimes experience some clipping when touching buildings or when your board tries to bury itself when entering deep snow, and that a developer has still been unable to recreate realistic-looking ice in a snowboarding game.

Sound: 10/10

This is where Amped really shines. Not only are there over 150 awesome indie tracks in genres ranging from punk to classical, but the game also supports custom soundtracks that you create. I should note another cool feature not found in many Xbox games. You can place songs from your custom soundtracks and the game's soundtracks on the same playlist. Nice! Venturing beyond the music, the rest of Amped's sound is great too. All the sounds are true to their real life counterparts. The game also sounds amazing in Dolby Digital mode. You'll hear photographers and fellow boarders yelling at you from where they actually are. As far as snowboarding games go, Amped's sound is second to none.

Replay Value: 8/10

Normally, I would score a snowboarding game's replay value somewhere around 5/10, but Amped has some things going for it in this department that other games don't. Usually, re-doing all the same challenges gets boring and even tedious. Not in Amped. The tracks are not only long, but they're also very wide, so the box doesn't lie when it says there are hundreds of ways to go down the mountains. Amped also has another cool feature. Each mountain has several snowmen hidden cleverly along the slopes. I won't say what happens when you find them all, but let's just say that you'll be happy you did. If you didn't the first time through, you'll also want to unlock all the new jackets, hats, boards and much more. I'm almost done Amped, and I know that I'll want to play it over and over.

Value: 10/10

Even when Amped was US$50, it was well worth the money. Now that it's a Platinum Hit, you'd be a fool not to check this game out if you like snowboarding games.

FINAL SCORE (NOT AN AVERAGE): 9/10

I highly recommend this game.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 04/12/03, Updated 04/12/03