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Shaun White Skateboarding Review for Xbox 360

Shaun White Skateboarding Review for Xbox 360

Going with the Flow

Many have tried to remove the Tony Hawk franchise from the top of the skateboarding heap, but none have succeeded. Unfortunately, Shaun White Skateboarding doesn’t do the trick (get it?), either. While it’s innovative in a number of ways and the basic mechanics work well, the campaign and multiplayer modes aren’t fun enough to keep fans coming back for more.

Shaun White Skateboarding screenshot

In the single-player game, you live in a society that has banned skateboarding and imprisoned Shaun White. The government, known as the Ministry, has also removed all the color from the world, leaving only shades of gray. You have to show off your flashy moves, which both brings the color back and gets you closer to breaking Shaun out of confinement. Basically, it’s like Footloose, except with Shaun White in Kevin Bacon’s role, the Ministry in John Lithgow’s, and skateboarding instead of dancing.

Anyway, to finish the game, you have to complete a variety of missions. The core mechanics are simple enough. Steering and tricks are accomplished with basic controller movements — Wii-mote flicking on Nintendo’s machine, and joysticks and the occasional button on the current-gen consoles. There’s a “flow” meter that builds when you do tricks and slowly shrinks when you’re not accomplishing anything. There’s a new system called “shaping,” through which you’re able to create rails, ramps, and verts out of thin air to get to your destination. At first, these follow pre-set paths as you travel along them, but eventually you have to steer your skater through the air in the direction you’d like to go. If you go the wrong way, you hit a patch of air and fall to the ground.

Whenever you do a trick, the area around you changes from grayscale to full-color, which is an interesting and well-done visual effect. People, vehicles, and buildings in the affected area are “de-influenced,” or freed from the shackles of the totalitarian government and regain the colors of freedom. (It turns out that most people would look exactly like skaters in a genuinely free society.) As you fill each flow meter, you’re able to reach more people and do more things with your skating magic.

Shaun White Skateboarding screenshot

So far, so good. Die-hard skateboard fanatics might complain that the trick system is too lenient, and those who prefer realism might complain about the over-the-top story and shaping feature. Fans of Shaun White’s previous games will hate the fact that you can’t play as the shaggy-haired Olympic superstar for most of the game. Those are all legitimate gripes, especially the complaint about the trick controls; while you can perform any number of specific moves (ollies, transfers, pop shuvits), it often feels like you’re just hitting the trick buttons at random, and you’re rarely penalized for button mashing. But those who don’t mind a game where it’s easy to pull off impressive-looking stunts will be quite happy with what they find here.

The problem lies in the mission design. Most of your assignments are simple fetch quests or “do tricks until you reach level X” challenges. These become bland in a hurry (one of your early challenges is to wall-ride on twenty Ministry propaganda signs that are spread over a large area, many of which are difficult to access), and the skate parks you explore often seem like haphazardly thrown-together collections of rails and vert ramps. As you gain EXP, you can buy new tricks, but even that doesn’t spice up the repetitive gameplay.

Shaun White Skateboarding screenshot

Also, the challenging elements are often simply frustrating. For example, when you die — you never fall down, but rather simply explode, meaning you won’t get any of the impressive “ouch” scenes that other skateboard games offer — your flow level drops all the way to zero. This means a single mistake, if it happens at the right moment, can sap away quite a bit of work. In addition, many of the fetch quests require you to take multiple ramps in a row, so falling to the ground means you have to skate all the way back to the beginning. This is especially annoying in some of the shaping-heavy challenges. Every good game punishes players for messing up, but too often we felt we were being abused rather than instructed by the setbacks we incurred.

Most of the multiplayer modes, all of which are available locally and online, aren’t much better. In Ministry vs. Rising, some players try to transform the area while others fight to keep it gray, which is a decent diversion for a short while. In Go with the Flow, players simply try to build their flow levels. Free Skate is, well, free skating. Shaping Battle, the game’s most innovative and fun multiplayer mode, pits players against each other to shape the environment and reach new areas.

Shaun White Skateboarding screenshot

The graphics are impressive, thanks mainly to the colorful effect that occurs when you perform tricks. At its best, this game really does make you feel as though you’re filling in all the missing life on a gray canvas. Shaun White Skateboarding is no technical marvel, as it looks old and suffers the occasional pop-in or hiccup, but it makes up for it with a distinct visual personality.

The sound, meanwhile, is a mixed bag. The music is just what you’d expect, a collection of second-rate pop/punk/rock tunes. In the cutscenes, the characters are all one-dimensional stereotypes, but there are some genuinely funny jokes, and the actors deliver their lines well. The gray-suited men you run into on the street never have anything interesting to say, unfortunately.

Shaun White Skateboarding gets enough right that we’re looking forward to a sequel. Were the developers to take the basic mechanics they created, keep the humor of the cutscenes, and dramatically improve the mission design, they’d have an impressive game. However, the boring missions, occasionally frustrating challenges, and lackluster multiplayer modes mean that all but the most dedicated boarding and Shaun White fans can skip this one.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 3.6 Graphics
This isn’t the most detailed game in the world, and it suffers from some minor technical issues, but there’s a lot of personality. 4.8 Control
Some may complain that the tricks are too easy, but this is the most accessible skating game we’ve ever played. 3.2 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
The music is clichéd, but the voice acting in the cutscenes is good. 3.0 Play Value
The bottom line is that the missions are not fun. 3.2 Overall Rating – Fair
Not an average. See Rating legend above for a final score breakdown.

Game Features:

  • Take full control of where you skate
  • Create incredible skate lines using city structures, stretch and twist handrails to dizzying heights, empty fountains to create bowls, make alleys into epic quarter pipes, and so much more.
  • With 80+ skate tricks hand-picked by Shaun (including a Shaun creation called the “Armadillo”), enjoy a unique and fun gameplay experience where you can shape, influence, and transform the city.
  • Find or create skate spots you’ve only dreamed about. The city is stretched over massive districts with tons of challenges to complete, including races, collection runs, narrative missions, and more.
  • Jump online to challenge your friends in cooperative or adversarial modes. Create your own maps, play with friends, and see how you rank against players from across the world using online leaderboards.

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