GameSpy
Review
of Amped 3
There's little doubt in my mind that
Amped 3's visual presentation and production is the most nauseating bastardization of
Adult Swim and
MTV I've ever seen in a game. From the moment you boot it up, you're assaulted with a garish, cartoony "coolness," that frankly left me feeling dizzy and ill after only a few fleeting moments. And there's only so many times I can stand to hear the words "awesome," "dude," and "righteous" spewing forth from the punch-able characters in the game. br/>
Do I hate
Amped 3? No. But I really hate the alleged "cool" approach that Indie Built has gone for. But when you try to block out -- and please do try! -- the psychedelia and frothing madness of the game, you're left with a decent enough snowboarding game that's full of open-ended slopes, tons of challenges, and a whole host of customization, unlockables, and so forth.
I'm not even going to try to explain the story aspect of the game, but let's just say you start out as a no-named rider with a group of four other obnoxious friends. The plan is to train your boarding skills and move from slope to slope and peak to peak beating challenges and gaining enough status points and cash to progress. The interface is a little confusing at first, as the screen is littered with different colored icons that mean different things. Once you figure out the legend, it's pretty straightforward, and more importantly, very open-ended.
It's the freedom given to you that makes
Amped 3 worth checking out. The multiple mountains are split up into smaller face sections, with each face having many different challenges and courses to beat. You can shoot off at a tangent and tackle any of the none-requisite stuff at will, impressing others on the slopes with your trickery boarding magic.
The trick system is nice and simple enough -- with the idea being to pull off and link huge point-scoring combos together to nail gold awards in the events. Ala
Tony Hawk's games, the real key to achieving these massive combos is the use of the butter move (a.k.a. the manual) which allows the skilled player to string together whopping combos including aerials, grinds, and holds for monster points. If anything this version of
Amped is much easier to pick up and play than the previous games, which is a good thing for those new to the sport.
The story mode is the way to go for unlocking the various mountains and courses, and once you've braved the wackiness, you'll be left with a large selection of replayability, and opportunities to earn cash with which to trick out your boarder. From clothes, boards, and even new comedy sleds, there's something here to please even the most hardcore snowboarding fans in terms of customization. There's also a rather nifty park builder tool with which you can stop the action anywhere in the game and plant some new objects down in order to ride 'em. This can affect the difficulty of certain areas of the game in two ways. It's possible to make things easier or harder by adding objects like ramps, etc., in order to score more points for a certain challenge. Whether or not you choose to use this feature is up to you, but it's there and it's fairly comprehensive.
For me, the biggest shortcoming of
Amped 3 was the lack of any decent multiplayer gameplay. There's nothing happening with Xbox Live -- save for some cool, but basic score tracking -- and the offline multiplayer is limited to the rather disappointing co-op two-player sledding events. Here you get to take turns at racking up the high points against another player, but really, what we're needing is some actual snowboarding multiplayer -- there's not a lick of that here, however. It leads me to believe that the game was pretty much rushed out in order to make the launch of the hardware, because with a system as powerful as the Xbox 360 and it's online services, multiplayer is all the more important to this next generation of gamers.
2K Sports reports that
Amped 3 is actually three times bigger in size than the first two games. It also -- obviously -- looks much nicer on the 360 hardware, although there are much better-looking games at launch. For the most part, the visuals are decent enough, and the framerate seems to be pretty solid -- although we're not talking 60 FPS by any means. One thing that did impress me was the sheer number of other CPU boarders and skiers that I encountered on the slopes. The environments really do feel as though they are alive with activity.
Another sizeable statistic is that the game features over 300 indie music tunes in its playlist. Whether or not the music is your own personal taste is one matter, but it's pretty cool to have such a whopping library to choose from. So on the whole,
Amped 3 does a good job of bringing decent graphics, a good trick system, and a large amount of noise to the table.
You've heard my criticisms about the tone and presentation of the game, and while you may or may not agree, I simply can't get past the fact that
Amped 3 is trying way too hard to be cool. It mars the gameplay to a point that I would have given up long ago due to irritation if I weren't reviewing it. The only thing I can suggest is to rent and check it out first. I'm sure some gamers will appreciate the path taken by Indie Built, or maybe you absolutely have to have a boarding game for your 360, but don't so I didn't warn you about the deranged lunacy.
©2005, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
