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Been searching for this for some time now, having loved the original (despite the way that it’d suddenly throw a progress-halting demand in your face just when you were thinking that you’d got the hang of it) and being quite excited about the promise of online play. Finally found a second-hand copy yesterday.
Can't quite make my mind up about it. The rail controls are backwards - left analogue controls balance, shoulders spin. The exact opposite of the previous game. What's most stupid about it is that this system doesn't fit in with the controls when you're not grinding. When the analogue controls spin on jumps and the shoulders tweak, you expect the same to be true in all circumstances. I simply can't get my head around it - balancing isn't an issue, really, but it makes lining up the board in time for the end of the rail overly difficult. The inclusion of a balance meter is annoying me, because it's unnecessary - if there was a balance meter in the first game, it was your character. It was so easy to tell when you were shifting over to one side too much before, because all you had to do was look at hir position on the rail. One of many attempts to pull in some of the massive Tony Hawk's Pro Skateboarding fanbase.
One of the others is the addition of transfers (although in snowboarding parlance they're apparently called 'butters'). Just before you land a jump, quickly flick either up/down or down/up - when you hit the ground, you'll be balancing on the board's tail or nose, depending on which of the two moves you did. It initiates or continues a combo, allowing you to carry the multiplier through to your next trick. It only seems to be of any great use for transfering between rails, really, but maybe it'll come into its own with a bit more practice.
Another change is the scoring system. You get more points for pulling off moves with style than you do for snatching at them. What this means in reality is that you have to hold the sticks about halfway when tricking, rather than just pushing them to the furthest edge. When you do this, a style meter pops up at the bottom of the screen and fills out the longer you hold the move. It all feels a bit random at the moment, though, with either the style meter refusing to appear when I could swear I'd got the stick in position, it disappearing halfway through a move for no apparent reason or me failing to even initiate a grab because I've not pushed the right analogue quite far enough.
Practice again, I suppose. Oh, and if you land a trick badly it slices your score.
It's still got the same sort of spikes in difficulty, although once you overcome a sticky bit you're generally rewarded with two new courses instead of just the one. The biggest barrier I've met so far was in the first Event. You're given a slope and have to trick your way down it in three rounds while your competitors do the same. You're graded on four things - media score, trick score and a couple of others that, to be honest, I've not really paid any attention to - and are given a position relative to the competition. You need to come first overall to progress.
And I tried time after time after time, before finally passing it. Really frustrating, because I'd pretty much exhausted the only other two courses available to me, bar their added exploration points like the snowmen.
That's something else nabbed from THPS - as well as the snowmen to find, each course also has five gaps to discover and five specific tricks to perform. The gaps are relatively easy to discover, as they're marked out with blue stars. The snowmen remain as annoying as ever, but are still a brilliant distraction when you get pissed off with your inability to progress. And they demand to be found and taken out, as their taunts are even more irritating than previously. I always thought they were an inspired addition to the formula - a bit of sedate exploration for when you're at your wits' end and an extra touch that helps you to learn the slope layouts without realising it, plus a means of allowing the less able players to still gain a few additional skill points to spend on increasing their abilities. They’re a lot more stingy with the extra points this time around, though – whereas you previously got one for every step that you took up the career ladder, here it’s only the completion of *some* of the tasks that results in them.
The Pro challenges - where a famous snowboarding name tricks off a number of mountain features and you have to outperform them - are now locked, 'advanced' challenges. There's a new sort of challenge called 'Photoshoot', where you're given a small area of mountain which contains a number of gold rings, and you have to pass through every ring while also hitting a total score target. They're quite an effective way of forcing the player to learn how to transfer from one kind of trick to another, but can become annoying - having to pass through the rings forces you to trick off specific areas of the scenery and this often means transfering straight from a jump into a rail grind, which requires absolute precision of movement and can mean many, many restarts. Media challenges are the same as before - my heart still sinks every time I come up against one that asks me to pull off rail grinds.
Some challenges require you to use a snow skate instead of a board. In a rather daft move, the new tutorial doesn't cover the skate, despite it having slightly different controls. They're nothing major, but the minor changes can confuse. Tweaked tricks, for example, seem to be far more severe than when performed on the board, and you need to end them sooner than you expect. The only major difference in control is that you can perform a skateboarding-style kickflip, which is useful for when you want to throw something quick and easy into a combo, but not much else.
Online, I’ve not really touched yet. Nobody on my friends list owns it. It sounds like it should be fantastic, though – up to eight people snaking their way down a mountain at the same time, trying to out-trick each other or grab the stars that are dotted around the place. That’s got to provide some great social gaming, and that’s what I enjoy about playing stuff online – the having a chat, messing about in the levels type of gaming. That’s what Live’s best used for, in my opinion. There’s also support for Microsoft’s XSN Sports community, allowing you to create a clan and set challenges for other clans or open to up to 64 entrants. Unfortunately, it appears to be deserted. I hate how people abandon games after a short while – the worst side of online gaming is that it shows just how fickle gamers are, how unprepared to revisit titles once they’ve got access to something new.
The presentation’s had more work put into it than the first game, but I’m coming to find it a little less likable. Gone are the frozen menu screens, their options encased in ice, to be replaced by a rounder, slightly cartoon look. Much the same applies to the ‘boarders, who are more detailed than previously, but less realistic and a little rubbery. The slopes are even more amazing than before, with an improved draw distance. Replays are disappointing, though, as all the sweet little tricks that they employed in the first game – the switch to slow motion when showing you perform an air trick being the best – are gone. So, too, are the clunky, funny, Gilliam-inspired animations that you received as reward for reaching a certain rank or completing a certain challenge. In their place, we get yawnsome and vapid interview clips with snoboarding ‘names’, during which we hear such sparks of wisdom as "remember where you came from," "respect your sponsor" and "snowboarding is cool." You might watch one of them before deciding that life’s too short to go through the others, even if they are only about forty seconds long each. It's the THPS factor again - it's blatantly obvious that they've looked to that series to steal some inspiration this time around.
Despite all the little niggles, it’s still a highly enjoyable game. The subtle way that your control of the board alters depending on the surface is a joy – getting through a patch of ice and into deep powder feels magical. The almost complete sense of freedom as to your route is still intact. When it all clicks together, when you’re performing a crash-free run, tricking and grinding off every available surface, going faster and faster and gaining even more air for even more impressive tricks as a result, it feels amazing. I’m hoping that the majority of the problems mentioned above will disappear if I can get to the stage where I can pull off the new stuff on instinct – it’s certainly true to say that the fact that I’ve had to start over again with an undeveloped character, after having got my stats up to some serious levels in the first game, must be adding to the slight clumsiness I’m feeling right now.
I just fired up the previous game a few minutes ago to make sure that I haven’t been misremembering it, and I immediately found it much friendlier. Pulling off tricks netting me at least 60k each with ease – I’m currently struggling to get that sort of score in total for complete runs in the sequel. Admittedly, I put in many hours before developing a character with the stats required for that sort of feat and spent many of the earlier ones frustrated at my lack of ability, but I was kind of expecting that I’d be able to carry the skills I learned there over into the newer game. I’m not giving up on it yet, though, not by any means – as I say, I struggled to get to grips with the first game for a long, long time, and this one still feels excellent when I manage to fluke a decent run on it. I need a moment of revelation, a sudden understanding of what I’m doing wrong – because I’m sure that some of the issues I’m having are down to a matter of me misunderstanding a few aspects of the new controls and abilities – and quite a few more skill points to distribute to my board before I can properly compare it with where I got to on the first game.
Paleface, you seemed to enjoy the original. Despite all the moaning above, I'd still recommend this - there's a lot of fun to be had out of simply trying to hit the targets, even if you end up failing. And you know me - I tend to point out the small negatives more than I do the major positives.
Will always be up for some Live-related action on it, of course, should others already own it/be considering buying it. |
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