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 borader, 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 impove
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 realisitic boarding experience. You won't be able to do the same ridiculous tricks
or move with near-surgical percision 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 arieal 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 percaution, 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 manuvers. 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 soley 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 disapointing. 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
framerate 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
indepentent 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 extenstion
of SSX's freestyle modes with a little more realism. In a way, it is. But the
landing and rail manuvers/mechanics are furstrating 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.
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Amped : Freestyle Snowboading
