by: John Olin

November 19, 2005

Amped 3 the latest in the Xbox systems’ exclusive snowboarding catalog is extremely interesting in many respects. It tries to have a very grungy, strange, random, and often times funny menu, loading, and overall system of presenting information. It is similar to what EA did with SSX On Tour but with a lot more thought put into it. You will see strange cartoons, little skits that explain the story metaphorically (I’m not kidding), and other quirks that a lot of us, including me, will love, but probably even more will hate with a passion. Basically if you have ever watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force, or 12OZ. Mouse on Adult Swim, and liked them, you will get a kick out of this. Just a few more examples, there are sock puppets, toys that help tell the stories, anime, 8-bit gaming segments, and even more weird stuff like that.

As for the actual snowboarding, it works well, with a few downsides. The main downside, is that you rarely fall off your board, even when it seems there is no way you are going to land it, but then you may be in a area where you don’t see any potential danger of falling off, and you do. This really got on my nerves, but when you get the controls and the mechanics down, you will be tricking in a similar fashion to the Tony Hawk series of games. When you do enough tricks consecutively, you go into a ‘Zen mode’ which shows little frills and brightly colored graphics come out of your board when jumping, doing certain moves, or grinding. It also basically means you are in a super mode, and you can do special tricks, as well as do more tricks all together. This is similar to the special mode you might find in Tony Hawk. When you begin the game you are taken through a lot of tutorial type missions, and other stuff like that, and eventually you will begin to get the hang of the game fairly quickly. There are a few odd segments in the game, such as hang gliding, or bobsledding, but they can also be very fun. While playing the game, you may do one goal on a slope, and have to get up to another, you can simply go into the paused menu and select a snowmobile, making for easier access up hill. You can also do some tricks on the snowmobile, but they are nothing more than tricks you do while throwing your legs up in the air.

To do all the goals in the game, you have a 3D map that shows all the goals from above, as you progress you unlock more areas, so on and so forth. The game has plenty of goals, such as getting the most tricks, collecting easter eggs, doing a certain trick in one jump, or trying to get sponsors. The first thing about the game is doing “butter” board tricks which are like manuals with a snowboard, allowing you to do back-flips, kick the board, around and so on, connecting them with a combination of buttons, while balancing the board with the analog stick. To grind on rails, and other objects, you simply approach the object from ground or above, and from there you can also do combos with pressing the face buttons. Then, you can go into air moves, and link them up. The game is also very leant on how you link, giving you a certain amount of time until the trick score fills up from yellow to pink to let you link into another grind, or jump off a slope, and do some air tricks. When in the air, if you press the left analog left or right slightly, you begin to see stars come out of your board, slowing you down, and allowing you to do more tricks, flips, and so on in the air. All in all, the snowboarding experience is extremely fluid, and while on the easy side, you can’t exploit the trick system like you can in the more recent Tony Hawk titles.

Now here is what I don’t completely understand about Amped 3, and the number one reason why it could have been better. Believe it or not, there is not any sort of real multiplayer, online or off. Offline, you have a co-op mode, but it isn’t really fleshed out, and feels tacked on, making you urn for competitive play even more. I just can’t fathom any reason for not having multiplayer in there of any sort—and just because it is a launch game really isn’t a good excuse.

Visually the game is definitely next-gen, but only by a hair. The environments are vast and stretch for quite a bit, but it still is just mostly the same color, the white of snow. The game does look very crisp, and the character models are modeled well but they do look a bit too like they are made out of wax or plastic. Still, you can’t help but feel that if they took maybe another six months, you would have a completely different product. The sound is done well, with the appropriate sloshes of snow, or the sound of the board against a hard place you are grinding on, with very good and appropriate music ranging from heavy metal, hip-hop, punk, grunge, and some contemporary stuff.

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Despite the fact that Amped 3 doesn’t have any multiplayer, or that the visuals aren’t exactly the best thing you will see on Xbox 360, it is still a very solid snowboarding game, and if you are getting tired of Tony Hawk, and don’t care about online modes, you will get a kick out of Amped 3’s humor, interesting, if not borrowed trick systems, and the vast slopes you can trick off of.

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