Review: Shaun White Snowboarding Road Trip for Wii (by Ubisoft)

Much as I love the hula hooping and yoga on my Wii balance board, I was overjoyed to find out there was a ‘proper’ snowboarding game being developed for it.

A snowboarding slalom game comes as part of the Wii Fit package but, as anyone who has played it will know, it only allows you to ride regular and it’s a pretty limited experience.

Shaun White Snowboarding blows that game totally out of the water.

Each time you load the game, you are asked to calibrate the board – it only takes seconds.  We think this is where it works out whether you’re regular or goofy – but even if it’s not, it doesn’t matter as we’re still stoked that you can ride regular or goofy in this game – or a bit of both if you fancy some switch business.

Getting on the snow is pretty quick too. You only have the choice of a few characters to play at first. I was a little surprised to find out you couldn’t actually play Shaun himself – or any other recognisable riders. Instead you play as one of a selection of ‘radical dudes and dudettes’ (my phrasing not theirs, but it pretty much sums up their characterisation). They each have their own special strengths – speed, jumping ability etc - and you pick one as your rider, one as your filmer.

The game is laid out as a world map – you start on a slalom course in Canada and in each course you have to achieve a sufficient number of points or a low enough time in the speed sections to gain tickets to ride other mountains. You’ll find yourself in Canada, Chile, Switzerland, Japan and other places around the world – hence the roadtrip title.

Some of the courses involve scoring points for landing big tricks. Others involve finishing the course in a certain time. Some involve picking up items along the way and many are a combination of these elements. I found it only took a couple of attempts at each course to get enough points to move on to the next level.

It took me a good few attempts to work out how to spin and grab at the start but once you get your head round the combination of board and controller options, it’s pretty easy. There are more than 20 tricks you can do - not found them all yet but plan to keep on trying!

I loved the bails – you can do an impressive ragdoll down the mountain and find yourself covered from head to foot in snow.

I also tried playing the game just with the controller and for some parts of the game – such as turning – it actually made it a lot easier (but not as fun obviously!).

One potentially useful thing I found about the game was doing virtual ollies to pop your jumps really gave you a boost – and proved a great way to remind you to do the same for real jumps on the real snow! I only wish rails were as easy as the ones in this game – just ride towards one and you’ll soon find yourself riding it in style – even popping on and off part way along.

A few people I’ve spoken too say they’ve had sore knees and feet from using the board but I imagine you get used to it after a few games. There is a game package available which includes a plastic snowboard-shaped attachment which sits on top of the balance board. We’ve heard good things about it but it also appears to be pretty much sold out – so good luck on finding one of those.

We really like the game’s controls in general, the great music (including our favourite Canadians The Trews) and the attention to detail in the different resorts around the world.

The only things we didn’t really like so much were the yo characters, the annoying emails from Shaun (ie you’re on a roadtrip and he always seems to be one step ahead) and the blatant branding for some random companies within the game.

But it’s a really absorbing game and feels enough like the real thing that you can totally lose yourself in the game play. It's also the nearest thing you’ll get to riding a Canadian terrain park or Chilean powder field in your socks anytime soon.

We’ll have a review of the Xbox version of this game as well soon – so keep your eyes peeled for that.

More info at www.ubisoft.com

Check out the video below for a little feature on how the controls and rail riding works: