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E3 08: A First Look at Shaun White Snowboarding

by Dick Ward July 18th 2008 12:14 PM CDT0 Comments

He looks a bit like Carrot Top, but the guy can seriously shred.  Ubisoft's new snowboarding title takes a realistic approach to the sport.  Will Shaun White Snowboarding be Ubi's Tony Hawk?  Dick Ward has the hands on report after the jump.

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My time with Ubisoft's Shaun White Snowboarding was a rush, in a literal and figurative sense.  After a quick demo, I was handed the controller and given free range of the mountain.  The controls are simple, the left stick operates the legs, the right stick moves the arms, and the left trigger bends and unbends the knees, primarily for the purpose of jumping.

I was off and heading down the mountain in no time.  It took a little while to get used to handling the board.  Turning the board is a bit more difficult to do accurately than I had anticipated, but after a while it got easier.  There's a lot to understand, so jumping right in was a bit overwhelming, but once I got the hang of it, I was tricking like a pro.  Well, more like an experienced amatuer, but still pretty well.

The game features for giant mountains to explore, all of which are available from the moment the game starts, and when I say giant, I mean it.  According to the game's producer Louis Lamarche, "If you get the fastest board in the game, and take the fastest path down the mountain and just speed straight down, it will still take you around ten minutes to get to the bottom".

Perhaps the most exciting feature of the game is the multiplayer aspect.  Taking a page from the book of Burnout Paradise, your friends can be right there in the game with you, without having to enter a separate multipayer mode.  You can set up your own competition and a simple challenge mode will let friends instantly join you anywhere you are on the mountain.

Louis showed off the multiplayer functionality but since talking and gaming don't mix, lost a trick competition to one of the other producers pretty badly.  He challenged again of course, to redeem himself, and though he didn't win the second competition, he was disqualified for throwing snowballs, he did get the last laugh.

Shaun White Snowboarding is a lot of fun, and free range cooperative play is an incredibly compelling aspect to the game.  Ubisoft has this game slated for Q4 2008, or as one of guys from Ubisoft Montreal put it "At some point when there's snow on the ground."