                     |
 COLD RECEPTION AMPED : FREESTYLE SNOWBOARDING Written By Shaun McCracken I guess I can add Amped to my list of disappointing games that I've played through my life. What I would have imagined to be a fun game that I could sit there and play for hours, turns out to be a game that's frustrating and broken. Be warned, readers, there's going to be quite a few comparisons on how SSX Tricky is much better than Microsoft's own effort. Amped is kind of like the freestyle portion of SSX Tricky, only less refined and a lot more frustrating. You start the game as an amateur boarder, participating in events and competitions to increase your overall rank, and become the best freestyling boarder there ever was. Of course, to get there, you need to complete certain tasks (such as getting a certain score either for the run or for the cameramen, and competing in sponsor events). Completing some events will increase your rank, and every so often, you can increase your rider stats and use new equipment to improve your performance. Seems so easy on paper, but the execution is a bitch. The design of Amped, from the tricks to the controls, are an attempt to make the game a realistic boarding experience. You won't be able to do the same ridiculous tricks or move with near-surgical precision like SSX Tricky. You won't land every jump like you can in SSX. You will fall on your face in this game, and do it quite a bit. You will only pull off tricks that can be done humanly possible. And that's where the problem is. In a game where you expect to be able to jump right into the game and get things going and not come across many problems, Amped makes freestyle snowboarding a complicated affair. Take landing after an areal trick for example. I can understand that if you're not careful, you will fall flat on your face from a jump. But even when you take the precaution, you still crash. There's never an indication that your board is straight and ready for a proper landing. Even if things look right, your trick is ruined by a horrible landing. This just doesn't happen every so often, this happens quite frequently. How do you expect somebody to reach a certain point level when they can't even complete a landing correctly. Then there's the rail maneuvers. This seems almost impossible to pull half the time. In SSX, all you have to do is jump on or get near a rail (if it's low enough) to get on. In Amped, you need to jump on the rail while pressing a button. I would say a good 70% of the time I miss getting on the rail either due to poor alignment or the boarder just bounces off the beam. Getting on a rail should not be this difficult. The trick list seems rather limited, since there's only 3 buttons to use, and the triggers can be used to "tweak" a move. I feel like I end up pulling off the same moves over and over again through a run. Oh, if you don't feel like using the face buttons, you can also use the right analog stick. It's even suggested in the manual that you use it, but I feel that the face buttons just work better. I'm not going to jump all over the game on the fact that it's just freestyle boarding. I actually have no problem with that. But if you're going to make a game that's solely freestyle boarding, shouldn't the tricks be easier to pull? I remember a game on the PS1 called Pure Ride, which was basically the same thing done here. The tricks were easy to pull, and it was easy to get on a rail. So doing something like that is not an impossible feat. The graphics were a bit disappointing. Maybe it's because the game is about two years old (I tend to review some games a bit too late), or maybe it just really does look plain. I would have imagined a lot more bump-mapping and lighting effects would have been used, since this was an Xbox title. As it is, it's not bad looking. The texturing is better than a PS2 game, the rider models look quite good, and the frame rate is rather smooth. Some things, such as the skies used as backgrounds are off in their color scheme, and show compression (like you would see in a JPEG file). The sound is nothing to write home about, either. The game boasts close to 200 independent music artists, which is good for variety, except some artists tend to sound similar to each other. You can use your own soundtracks, which is good. The sound effects are decent, but some of the ambient character voices are just irritating. Final Thought Amped is not the game I thought it was. I was hoping for something like an extension of SSX's freestyle modes with a little more realism. In a way, it is. But the landing and rail maneuvers/mechanics are frustrating as hell, which really kind of ruin the game, since these are two important things that need to be done in the game to win. I would say rent this one first. If you can tolerate it's "learning curve" (or problems, as I call it), then maybe it's worth picking up. But to me, Amped does nothing to be, at the very least, SSX's equal. .
. . . |
  Published By : MICROSOFT Developed By: MICROSOFT Year Published : 2001 Players : 1-2 ESRB Rating: EVERYONE  OVERALL
SCORE
7.6
Perhaps some people can tolerate the slower pace of the game, but I can't.  Transworld Snowboarding  SSX Tricky SSX 3 SSX On Tour 1080 Avalanche |
