Shaun White Snowboarding for PSP Reviews by Gamers

Shaun White first medaled in the X-Games in 2002 at the age of 16. Now, six years later, the one that used to be called Flying Tomato because of his beaming red hair is poised to bring the world his first starring role in the appropriately titled videogame, Shaun White's Snowboarding, later this year.



I recently got the chance to venture to Park City, one of the cities that sponsors Shaun White's boarding escapades, to play around with the single-player option on one of the game's maps.



The first thing that truly struck me about Shaun White's Snowboarding was the graphics. The PSP does a great job of rendering the environment and player models and keeps them all running at steady framerate. The most impressive aspect is the motion blur effect that inhabits the borders of the screen and delivers a wonderful sense of speed. Luckily, doing daredevil speed runs down the side of a mountain has its perks in the form of the ever-valuable points that are then translated into the even-more-valuable attribute points.







Much like other snowboarders of the past, Shaun White's character progression is based on experience points. Unlike the rest of the flock, however, Shaun's game brings in stickers as a sort of wrench in the machine. While you will earn attribute points that can be distributed across four categories that include jumping and cornering, there are also three sticker slots per board that act as power-ups. There's a decent list of stickers that also act as a visual additive aside from their obvious attribute bonuses.



I was a bit disappointed to see that characters aren't created; instead, you'll be picking from a list of archetypes. They all have a set distribution of attribute points that you can then build off of, but why not allow at least a rudimentary character creation tool if players want to go that route?



The all important tricks that drive the action forward are performed just as you'd expect with a mix of face buttons, shoulder button modifiers and directions for spins and flips. Rails can be grinded by hopping on and maintaining your balance by negotiating a swaying meter that appears in the center of the screen. There are also the expected multipliers and whatnot to encourage players to string tricks together.



Challenges in Shaun White are presented from a wide list that varies depending on which of the mountains you choose. It's not as wide open as the console versions, but there's still a wide variety of objectives that will take you to different parts of each slope.



My short time with Shaun White Snowboarding on the PSP left me wanting a bit more from the portable offering. Aside from the visuals, everything felt a bit run of the mill as snowboarding games go. I'll have to spend some more time before passing final judgment, but action sports fans should keep a watchful eye on Shaun White's first venture into the videogame realm as its November 16 release date approaches.

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