Way back when, when the Xbox 360 launched in 2005, a game launched alongside it to little or no real reception. That game was called Amped 3. Easily the jewel in the crown of the 360's launch line-up, Amped 3 was a snowboarding game like none that had come before it. With a madcap bunch of characters, a challenging single player mode, a sense of humour, and controls that almost anyone could pick up and play, Amped 3 set new standards for the snowboarding genre.
And so, it was with great anticipation that we loaded up Stoked: Big Air Edition. It too is a snowboarding game, which at least in our mind, had us anticipating a game that was equally as great as Amped. The only problem is, Stoked takes a slightly different track. And it's all the worse for it.
Stoked: Big Air Edition is a no-nonsense take on snowboarding.
Stoked is a snowboarding game for the snowboarding purists. It takes itself seriously - very seriously - and simply doesn't have time for the stupidity and humour of games like Amped. In fact, comparing it to Amped would probably offend it - it wouldn't want to be associated with a game that treats snowboarding as anything less than the sport of Gods. Instead, Stoked tries to offer as realistic a simulation of snowboarding as it's possible to make within the boundaries of a game, which means that while you won't find your character paralysed when you crash into a tree, it's also about as easy to pick up and play as it would be to do a 720 flip one your first run down a mountain.
The problem is, Stoked: Big Air Edition is hard. Very hard. Even the tutorial had us stumped for a while, which can never be a good sign. The root of the difficulty is that the game seems to wish you had more hands and/or fingers than it's possible to have. The controls, far from Amped's streamlined accessibility, are convoluted and confusing. To jump, you have to push up on the right analogue stick, or pull down, and then push up to jump further/higher. You can spin, or flip using the left analogue stick (but can't rotate diagonally), while grabs are performed by holding a trigger, and then pushing the right analogue stick - the one you've just used to jump - in one of eight directions. Things are further confused through your ability to "pre-load" spins before you jump, leaving you holding one of the triggers, while holding the right analogue stick down, getting ready to push the left stick to the side to make your rider spin, all while trying to keep them going in a straight line, and avoid any trees. If you were an octopus, you'd probably stand a better chance, but sadly, with a standard set of human hands, Stoked is simply confusing.
It's bad enough that it's so hard to control, but this could be forgiven if the rest of the game was fairly easy to get into. The problem is, Stoked then decides to hide behind another layer of snowboarding terminology, just to make sure that anyone who wants to play, and doesn't spend every weekend in the French Alps has a job getting involved. You progress through the game by boarding down various faces of several real-life mountains, which have been lovingly recreated in game, and completing various challenges you find as you go. Whether you're simply asked to perform a certain type of trick (a spin, or a flip) off a certain object as you try to beat a score, or have to race down a hill against a professional boarder, there's a decent range of tasks here - but there's one that always causes us to trip up. Called Stick a Trick, this challenge asks you to do a specific trick, or sequence of tricks - but it often doesn't tell you what you're meant to do in order to pull them off. While for most grabs, it'll tell you which way you've got to push the right analogue stick, and which trigger you've got to hold, there are plenty of tricks it'll ask you do without you having a clue what it's talking about. Thankfully, if you press start, you can bring up a handy grab manual, that goes some way to explaining some of the terminology, but it's still pretty impenetrable. After much repetition, and several hours with the game, you do start to slowly, sort of, almost get the hang of it, but a tutorial, or even some understanding that not everyone who wants to play a snowboarding game knows absolutely everything there is to know about the sport would be appreciated.
Ah, the reverse googly overhead knee brace nose grind. A trick of the masters.
As an example, one of the earlier Stick a Trick challenges asked us to perform a 50:50, followed by a Switch 50:50. Even if you've been snowboarding, you may not have a clue what that's talking about. It turns out a 50:50 is a type of grind, but rather than pressing a certain button to initiate the grind, in Stoked, grinds are all about your positioning (which is the simulation aspect taking control again). If you approach a log, or barrier head on, you'll perform a 50:50. If you rotate 180 degrees, you'll have performed a switch 50:50. It took a lot of searching through the in game documentation to even find a reference to a 50:50, yet alone to figure out how to perform a "switch" one - and we can't imagine we're the only ones who've had this problem.
Things are further compounded in the Pro Faceoff events, which set you the challenge of performing the same series of tricks as one of the game's "Pros", as you pass through gates on the way down a mountain. Each time you pass through a gate, you'll be given a new set of tricks to perform, which means not only do you end up with only a few seconds to perform the named tricks (which also means figuring out quite what each trick wants you to do), but you have to attempt to perform eight or nine sets of them in a row - and, just to make things even harder, you can only crash three times before you'll have to start over. While you can miss certain sections or tricks out, and the game won't directly penalise you, you'll need to beat the Pro's overall score, so you can only miss so many sections before you set yourself an impossible task. Add into this the Pro's snide selection of putdowns he'll whinge at you every time you stray from the course or mess up, and you're left with a game you'll be more than happy to walk away from.
Me, after failing the pro challenge for the 500th time.
The more time you spend with Stoked, the more its icy exterior will begin to thaw, until eventually, you start to find that underneath, there's a reasonably fun, if unspectacular snowboarding game waiting to be discovered. While it doesn't have the same personality as Amped, and seems to be infused with all the excitement and charisma of a German nuclear power plant inspector, there's something about the freedom of snowboarding down a hill, pulling off tricks as you go without having to worry about breaking your neck that makes a game fun - it's just a shame this hasn't been properly exploited in the game.
And in fact, that's our biggest problem. Had the controls been more accessible (or even just a bit simpler!), and the game taken a bit more time to help a snowboarding novice into the game, we'd have left Stoked feeling a lot better. As it stands, what we're left with is a disappointment. If you're looking for a good snowboarding game, try Amped 3 - you can find it for about a fiver in most places now, and it's so much easier to pick up, and, importantly, so much more fun than this.
Format Reviewed: Xbox 360
