Xbox 360
Shaun White (also known as The Flying Tomato—seriously) is arguably the most famous snowboarder in the world. Following the lead of other extreme sports luminaries Dave Mirra, Tony Hawk and Kelly Slater, White has now lent his name and likeness to a video game.
Apparently built using the Assassin's Creed engine, Shaun White Snowboarding certainly looks impressive, with smooth crisp lines, realistic rider and board animations and four impressively realised mountains. Occasionally your board seems to slide through rather than over the snow, but this is a minor complaint rather than a fatal flaw, especially given the scale of the endeavour.
Basic manoeuvres and more complicated tricks are both easily mastered, thanks to the simple control scheme. Tricks are deliberately limited to basic flips, spins and grabs, in an attempt to make the game more realistic. However, the consequence is that the entire range of tricks is quickly mastered.
The sales pitch for Shaun White Snowboarding promises the freedom to chose "where, when, how and with whom you want to ride". In a sense this is true—you have free reign to visit all four mountains right from the start, and can enter into any event at any point simply by finding the starting point on the slopes.
However, you don't have to enter competitions, and the game is at its best when you don't. Having been dropped from a helicopter, you can ride from the top of the mountain all the way down to the foot in a single free-roaming run. You can do pretty much whatever you want, including throwing snowballs at other riders. The best rides are in the back country areas at the top of each mountain, without the clutter of rails and boxes that populate the lowers slopes.
However, if you do want to enter the trick events, you have to go through what passes for a story mode, where you're taken on trips across the globe to collect enormous glowing coins hidden on the slopes. These free up focus powers such as a 'super jump' or 'super speed'.
At this point the gameplay starts to break down, destroying whatever illusion of realism there was. To be honest, this was already somewhat frayed by your ability to land jumps of hundreds of feet without harm, and to rail along suspiciously smooth tree trunks. More than anything, these power-ups are more reminiscent of a second-rate SSX clone than a realistic snowboarding simulator.
Still, there is much fun to be had, especially in the online multiplayer mode where you can ride with up to seven friends, either completing events or enjoying that well-advertised freedom. Broken as it is, Shaun White Snowboarding is still the best snowboarding game on the 360.