Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip
Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip for Nintendo Wii introduces a whole new way of playing snowboarding games. Developed by Ubisoft, Shaun White Snowboarding was developed from the ground up to take advantage of the Wii Balance Board, giving you an experience that is more intuitive, realistic, and fun.
Land your favorite tricks in combination for the ultimate score. View larger. |
You can ride on mountains all over the world, including in Japan. View larger. |
Hop Onto the Wii Balance Board for a Realistic Experience
The Wii Balance Board is an accessory from Nintendo that works and is shaped like an elongated scale, with sensors that can tell how much and where pressure is applied when you stand on it. This works perfectly with Shaun White Snowboarding, as it can detect whether you are leaning forward, back, left, or right, and it reacts like a real snowboard would.
The Wii Balance Board gives you an unprecedented, realistic experience. View larger. |
To jump, you quickly shift your weight to the balls of your feet, and while in the air, you tap the A or B buttons and lean left and right to grab the board and spin, respectively. A multitude of tricks are available for you to learn, and chaining them together lets you amass more points. As you do tricks, a small little icon shows up on the screen to let you know what you did. For example, if you do a 720-degree turn called a “melon,” a little watermelon slice will show up on screen.
If you would rather forego the Balance Board, you can play with just the Wii Remote as well.
Beautiful Graphics with Unique Camera System
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip features a unique camera system, where you can choose different cameramen and camerawomen to follow you around. Some are better for tricks and others for speed, so be sure to pick the right one, as they’ll give you abilities during your ride.
As the cameraperson follows you on your ride, you’ll notice different effects, such as image blurs around the edges of the screen to give a sense of speed. The camera will collect snow when you fall, and sometimes the camera will white out after completing a big jump, as the cameraperson has to follow you and do the same moves as well. This unique system adds another element of strategy and fun to the game.
Tour the World with Shaun White
Road Trip begins with you as a newcomer to the snowboarding scene. Shaun White serves as your mentor, and together you travel the world, tackling mountains and making friends as you work your way up to becoming the world’s best snowboarder.
As you win competitions and meet new people, they’ll show you new tricks and special abilities that will help you against the competition. You’ll have to learn different snowboarding skills as you compete in races down a mountain, half-pipe events, slaloms, rail jams, and more. You can also take a breather and just free ride in the back country at your own pace.
Play With or Against Your Friends
Road Trip doesn’t have online multiplayer options, but you can play both competitively and cooperatively with a friend on a split screen. In competitive mode, you and a friend can race to the bottom or try to out-trick each other for the highest score. In cooperative mode, both of you ride down the same slope, and the scores are added together. The entire game can be played cooperatively, so you and a friend can tour the world together and unlock new extras.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Great use of the balance board. Really fun.
The graphics look great. The game is easy to pick up, but contains a good level of difficulty for higher levels that advance gamers will want. If you own a balance board and you want a great game that is well made and not cheap junk like many others, get this game.
5 Stars Best Balance Board Game Yet!
This game is sick! I can’t imagine a better use of the balance board. Balance board is a must. The graphics, control, and lower body workout all combine to make this game a winner!
I’d recommend it to anyone!
5 Stars This game is a blast
I really enjoy this game a lot. Everyone from my room mates to my parents have a blast playing this game.
2 Stars A disappointment. Extremely bland game
Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip overall is a letdown. Snowboarding games for the most part have been very successful and really fun to play, however this game lacks any real depth and gets extremely repetitive after a couple hours. The game has “Shaun White” in the title which is deceiving because you are not able to play as Shaun White until the very end of the game. (In the Target limited edition you can play as Shaun White a lot earlier but only briefly.) So for the entire game you are forced to use these made up characters the game offers you. No other pro riders are in the game and there is no create a player mode which is very frustrating since you get tired of these characters quickly. The game play is easy to pick up and fun at first but once you’ve figured out there is only so much to do with it you get very bored.
The Wii balance bored does make this game unique and interesting, but its certainly not worth buying a Wii balance bored for this game if you don’t already have one. Bottom line..I constantly found myself asking for more with this game but was instead fed the same races, trick competitions, and expeditions throughout the whole game. Great game to rent for a weekend, but that’s it. Consider, the better and cheaper ($20) We Ski before you drop a load of money if you’re looking for an outdoor winter snowboard/ski game.
PROS: Easy controls to pick up
Fun Co-op mode
Decent soundtrack
CONS: Game gets extremely repetitive very quickly
No create a player mode
No real riders besides Shaun White
No real mountains
Sub par graphics
My advice would be to at least rent this game before considering to spend $50 on it. ($55 for the Target Limited Edition)
4 Stars Cool tricks for snowboarding on the Wii balance board (yet fun and safe)
I bought the Target version at Target for Shaun White Snowboarding. So far, so good. I like that I can use the Wii Balance Board (with a remote), but more tricks can be done with the remote alone. As with all the other current games using the balance board, only one balance board may be used between 2 players, so head-to-head competition are not fair then. This game is multi-player, but I’ve only played in 2 player mode so far. There are basically 2 types of competition: fastest time and most tricks. I wish that we could use our own Wii character. There aren’t too many friends of Shaun White from which to choose, but this game is not about personalization. The Target Version gives you some freebies, like an extra mountain, for a few more bucks but I have yet to explore that. I’ve personally never tried snowboarding, but this game appealed to me because it’s fun yet safe- you can tumble from a bad fall after a jump or flip, but you are fairly invincible through trees and walls, i.e. you won’t die literally or virtually and still can keep playing without interruptions of having to start over. This game did make me sweat a bit. It’s a long version of the snow games in Wii Fit. I just got We Ski, so I am not sure how it compares yet. I bought these games because they utilize the balance board, which gets my booty off the couch!
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment