Stoked: Big Air Edition

Okay, a lot of this review is a rehash of the review I did for the original Stoked (which is why you'll see the old pics and not gameplay footage from youtube), and pretty much any new info is basically only about what been added in the game. Also, there may be some info not relevant to today since it's almost been a year. Wow, where the time go?

StokEd is all about the back country; no parks allow. There's nothing but trees and rocks (and the occasional house). You would think that it would make the mountains less fun to ride, and in a way it does, but that doesn't kill the experience in any way. It's fun to careen downhill into a forest hoping you don't hit a tree on the way down. Hope is pointless because you usually do, but its fun nevertheless. When you pick one of the 5 mountains (2 of them are locked in the beginning) you can start from a number of drop zones and make your way down the mountain, completeing challenges on the way. My only complaint about this is that you can't start at the very top and decide which way you want to go, or at least not on all of them. There's this feature where the weather changes on the mountains, but I have yet to noticed any real changes in gameplay except you may move a little slower in knee deep snow.

Zero Points? You Suck!

The controls mimic those of Skate: you use the trigger and the analog to do grabs, grind (jib in snowboarding terms) by jumping on the surface, and....and....huh, I guess that's it. Okay then. The game does award bonus moves or skills depending on how you ride. Are you a hucker or a stylist? Huckers do as many moves as the can before they land. Stylist riders concentrate on one move at a time and land it nicely. Huck enough and you can do moves faster. Style a lot and you can unlocked tweaked moves (tweaked moves are standard moves with extra flair). If you're like me, huck away.

Still no points, huh?

The main goal in this game is to become a pro, and to do that you have to complete challenges set by people who have nothing better to do but stay outside all day in the freakin freezing mountain waiting for someone to come at meet the challange. The challenges start off slow and kinda boring, but once you get sponsored, challenges come in left and right and are a real test of skill. You may have to check your move list several hundred times, but it's all good. These challenge are not easy, at least at first, and doing competitions are increasingly difficult, but with great difficulty comes great satifaction (Nobody compare that last sentence to Spider-man, and if your saying "Huh? How is that related to Spider-man?", then you're doing alright. Keep it up.)

See, if you keep landing on your head, you won't score any points

Big Air Edition adds a few new additions that, in my opinion, makes this one of the best snowboarding game of all time (this, SSX, and 1080). They finally added racing events, which for some reason is my favorite thing to do in snowboarding games. I kind of wish they'd increase the speed more than they had, but it'll do. The controls have been smoothed out and graphics improved nicely, but not much since again this is still a budget title. Inside the game case, there's a printed version of the trick list, so now you don't have to pause the game to look to see how to do a trick. The game also added park object, which really seem out of place in a game like this. The 2 biggest additions is the helicopter and the 2 new mountains. You can fly the copter yourself and drop off at any point of the mountain....awesome.

Ummm...that's it. Yea. That's all I have to say. Hmmm, thought I would have more to say. It's an excellent game is you like snowboarding, and for $40 it's a good deal. Hmmm....you know, it feels like I'm not using enough space. I mean this is short even by my lazy ass standards. I feel like I need to fill the void with something. Oh, the soundtrack features a bunch of no-name talent that does a good job capturing the feel of the game, and it's a extensive list of songs. What else; what else? I guess friends can ride online. Ummm......fuck it; I said all I can say. Just buy the damn thing.

Rating: Fuckin Awesome (and it's 40 Bucks!)

NOTE: I'm thoroughly upset that there isn't a single snowboard deck with a picture of a ninja. Not one. I'm not asking for a whole clan here; just one kickass ninja.