Amped 3
Posted January 21, 2006
The previous two renditions of the Amped snowboarding series have often been labeled as boring in comparison to the more popular SSX series by EA Sports. Indie Built decided to forgo the structure of the previous two games and took a rather radical approach. I've come to the conclusion that the creation of the presentation and storyline for Amped 3 began by kidnapping the voice of the Strongbad flash cartoon, the makers of Jib-Jab, and the animators behind Robot Chicken. I can only assume the developers locked them in a poorly ventilated room with five pounds of marijuana, a snowboard, and some poorly paid game programmers. After playing this bizarre game, that scenario is far more plausible than the normal game development process.
The story begins innocently enough on a ski lift with the four other people in your snowboarding posse. While playing through the first of seven mountains, the story revolves around teaching you the basics of snowboarding. By the time you gain access to the next mountain, your crew has mysteriously vanished and left you with five thousand bucks in debt. While the tale has remained fairly normal up to this point, the narration of the remaining story spins wildly out of control and mostly centers on brainwashing, evil minions, and a ridiculous baron seeking control of people through video games.
Perhaps the worst aspect with this type of presentation is an obvious lack of focus to one style of storytelling, which is detrimental to the story itself. The spastic design of the narrative screams out for some sort of agreement that should have been made on a single type of animation to use. I would be amazed to find out if any form of animation got cut out of the final version due to stylistic differences. Anyway, if you can stand the unique, headache inducing cutscenes, there is a snowboarding game waiting to be played.
Gameplay:
For those who are familiar with the Amped series, the previous style of gameplay opted for a simulation feel when taking on the white powder. Feeling the learning curve was too great for certain gamers, the developers decided to trash the old system in favor of a simpler, arcade approach so button-mashers everywhere could feel special. Seriously, the game's new approach to snowboarding is overly forgiving and oddly familiar to the most popular skateboarding game on the market.
Fortunately, the level design was one thing that needed to be revamped. The variety of boarding elements and sheer freedom of space opens up Amped 3 to different playstyles this time around. Each mountain is broken up into separate sections that act as a whole. You can start at the peak and work through separate areas to perform tricks and complete challenges. Many of the jumps are much larger and the number of objects on the slopes has increased as well. In addition, a level editor has been included to allow for creation of any in-game object on the track. This can increase the chance of completing a pesky challenge.
The challenges are comprised of impressing sponsors with special jumps or rail riding, media photos for cash, notoriety quests, and the storyline missions. The objectives of the challenges can range from pulling off high scores, collecting stars, speed races, beating professionals, or just hurling your body off makeshift sleds for maximum damage. The variety keeps the single player game fresh for each mountain you visit. In addition, there is a standing challenge for each mountain area to impress a certain number of bystanders using the Awesomeness meter.
The Awesomeness meter fills up each time you can pull off a trick worth more than about two thousand points. If the trick is too difficult and the racer falls hard, the meter will drop. When the meter gets completely full, a period of 30 to 45 seconds will start for impressing the people on the slopes. If the full number of people is reached along every area on a particular mountain, a gamerscore achievement bonus will be awarded. The meter is easily filled as style bonuses are accumulated.
Style bonuses can be fairly easy to come by because the control system has been drastically simplified. The controls basically just require a little timing to progress through the game. For instance, the rails require almost no skill to ride due to invisible forces pulling your boarder onto the rail. Sadly, this type of mediocrity provides no challenge for even the novice gamer. In addition, the controls feel far too loose when lining up a jump or attempting to cut across a mountain. Alternate forms of transportation, such as the snowmobile or the hang glider, also suffer from a floating feel of unresponsive control.
There is no Xbox Live multiplayer included in this rendition of Amped, not even the 8-player ride along mode from Amped 2. The game does take advantage of the online leaderboard feature, so you can compare a variety of statistics to the rest of the online gaming community. It's sad to see a game that could easily cater to online matches not include such a fun feature.
Graphics:
The graphical elements of Amped 3 are disappointing to say the least. The vast majority of the game would have looked nearly identical on the original Xbox with the exception of tremendous usage of bumpmapping the textures. The character design seemed almost blurry in comparison to the much finer detail seen in many other 360 games. The majority of the textures are fairly ugly up close and the snow particle effects are disappointing. The character animations seem stiff and unnatural when performing tricks or just flying down the slopes. Also, there are a fair amount of draw distance issues that can hamper play when preparing for the next major obstacle further down the mountain. The only positive note is the frame rates are silky smooth and the load times are lightning quick due to the neglectful lack of high quality graphics.
Audio:
The music selection is the best part of the auditory features in Amped 3. Containing over 300 songs, the indie soundtrack is a typical mixture of punk, hip-hop, and techno music. It's actually tough to hear all of the music available just by playing through the short single player game. The sound effects are limited due to the nature of the game. Directional effects are occasionally heard from fellow skiers, but it's a pointless use of the feature. The voice work found in Amped 3 is fitting for most of the characters but terribly annoying. Many times, the voiceovers were attempts to sound moronic in a futile effort to be humorous. I'm guessing the budget for voice work at Indie Built only covered the developers they were already paying.
Conclusion:
The single player game can be blown through in about eight hours by focusing only on the challenges needed to advance to the next mountain. The rest of the challenges can be completed to earn the last two achievements, but there is no other incentive to finish them. I would like to mention the final musical number is perhaps the funniest ending I've ever seen. It pays homage to the nature of video games in a cute way, so it's worth seeing at least once if you can download it.
For those seeking achievement points, half of the 1000 of the points can be collected by finishing the single player game. 290 points can be attained with a few more hours of effort on the slopes and the final 210 points will take many more hours to collect due to finishing all the challenges at the gold level. Due to the obvious flaws, I can't recommend this game to anyone other than teenagers with short attention spans and absolute snowboarding fanatics. It's definitely not worth the full retail price and should only be rented if you can stand the spastic story long enough to get through the game. Otherwise, skip it and pick up something worth your time and money.
The story begins innocently enough on a ski lift with the four other people in your snowboarding posse. While playing through the first of seven mountains, the story revolves around teaching you the basics of snowboarding. By the time you gain access to the next mountain, your crew has mysteriously vanished and left you with five thousand bucks in debt. While the tale has remained fairly normal up to this point, the narration of the remaining story spins wildly out of control and mostly centers on brainwashing, evil minions, and a ridiculous baron seeking control of people through video games.
Perhaps the worst aspect with this type of presentation is an obvious lack of focus to one style of storytelling, which is detrimental to the story itself. The spastic design of the narrative screams out for some sort of agreement that should have been made on a single type of animation to use. I would be amazed to find out if any form of animation got cut out of the final version due to stylistic differences. Anyway, if you can stand the unique, headache inducing cutscenes, there is a snowboarding game waiting to be played.
Gameplay:
For those who are familiar with the Amped series, the previous style of gameplay opted for a simulation feel when taking on the white powder. Feeling the learning curve was too great for certain gamers, the developers decided to trash the old system in favor of a simpler, arcade approach so button-mashers everywhere could feel special. Seriously, the game's new approach to snowboarding is overly forgiving and oddly familiar to the most popular skateboarding game on the market.
Fortunately, the level design was one thing that needed to be revamped. The variety of boarding elements and sheer freedom of space opens up Amped 3 to different playstyles this time around. Each mountain is broken up into separate sections that act as a whole. You can start at the peak and work through separate areas to perform tricks and complete challenges. Many of the jumps are much larger and the number of objects on the slopes has increased as well. In addition, a level editor has been included to allow for creation of any in-game object on the track. This can increase the chance of completing a pesky challenge.
The challenges are comprised of impressing sponsors with special jumps or rail riding, media photos for cash, notoriety quests, and the storyline missions. The objectives of the challenges can range from pulling off high scores, collecting stars, speed races, beating professionals, or just hurling your body off makeshift sleds for maximum damage. The variety keeps the single player game fresh for each mountain you visit. In addition, there is a standing challenge for each mountain area to impress a certain number of bystanders using the Awesomeness meter.
The Awesomeness meter fills up each time you can pull off a trick worth more than about two thousand points. If the trick is too difficult and the racer falls hard, the meter will drop. When the meter gets completely full, a period of 30 to 45 seconds will start for impressing the people on the slopes. If the full number of people is reached along every area on a particular mountain, a gamerscore achievement bonus will be awarded. The meter is easily filled as style bonuses are accumulated.
Style bonuses can be fairly easy to come by because the control system has been drastically simplified. The controls basically just require a little timing to progress through the game. For instance, the rails require almost no skill to ride due to invisible forces pulling your boarder onto the rail. Sadly, this type of mediocrity provides no challenge for even the novice gamer. In addition, the controls feel far too loose when lining up a jump or attempting to cut across a mountain. Alternate forms of transportation, such as the snowmobile or the hang glider, also suffer from a floating feel of unresponsive control.
There is no Xbox Live multiplayer included in this rendition of Amped, not even the 8-player ride along mode from Amped 2. The game does take advantage of the online leaderboard feature, so you can compare a variety of statistics to the rest of the online gaming community. It's sad to see a game that could easily cater to online matches not include such a fun feature.
Graphics:
The graphical elements of Amped 3 are disappointing to say the least. The vast majority of the game would have looked nearly identical on the original Xbox with the exception of tremendous usage of bumpmapping the textures. The character design seemed almost blurry in comparison to the much finer detail seen in many other 360 games. The majority of the textures are fairly ugly up close and the snow particle effects are disappointing. The character animations seem stiff and unnatural when performing tricks or just flying down the slopes. Also, there are a fair amount of draw distance issues that can hamper play when preparing for the next major obstacle further down the mountain. The only positive note is the frame rates are silky smooth and the load times are lightning quick due to the neglectful lack of high quality graphics.
Audio:
The music selection is the best part of the auditory features in Amped 3. Containing over 300 songs, the indie soundtrack is a typical mixture of punk, hip-hop, and techno music. It's actually tough to hear all of the music available just by playing through the short single player game. The sound effects are limited due to the nature of the game. Directional effects are occasionally heard from fellow skiers, but it's a pointless use of the feature. The voice work found in Amped 3 is fitting for most of the characters but terribly annoying. Many times, the voiceovers were attempts to sound moronic in a futile effort to be humorous. I'm guessing the budget for voice work at Indie Built only covered the developers they were already paying.
Conclusion:
The single player game can be blown through in about eight hours by focusing only on the challenges needed to advance to the next mountain. The rest of the challenges can be completed to earn the last two achievements, but there is no other incentive to finish them. I would like to mention the final musical number is perhaps the funniest ending I've ever seen. It pays homage to the nature of video games in a cute way, so it's worth seeing at least once if you can download it.
For those seeking achievement points, half of the 1000 of the points can be collected by finishing the single player game. 290 points can be attained with a few more hours of effort on the slopes and the final 210 points will take many more hours to collect due to finishing all the challenges at the gold level. Due to the obvious flaws, I can't recommend this game to anyone other than teenagers with short attention spans and absolute snowboarding fanatics. It's definitely not worth the full retail price and should only be rented if you can stand the spastic story long enough to get through the game. Otherwise, skip it and pick up something worth your time and money.