Breathe in that cold mountain air, layer up and strap yourselves in for the best snowboarding game on the Xbox 360: Stoked: Big Air Edition. You might have missed its quiet release last holiday season, but its amazing graphics, solid gameplay and incredible amount of depth deserve a second look. With the XXI Winter Olympics upon us, there’s no better time to pick up Stoked: Big Air Edition, snowboarding fans will not be disappointed.

Overview

When starting up Stoked: Big Air Edition for the first time, you’re taken to something called “The Blue Tomato Customizer” where you customize your rider’s sex, face, height and home country.  From there you select their hairstyle, eye wear, facial deco, clothing, accessories, board and your rider’s theme song.  There are quite a few options here, but I would have liked to see more.  There’s no female character option but personally, I would have liked to see bald for a hairstyle choice.

All dudes, all the time.

Players are given three available options as part of the challenges: tutorial, free ride and competitions.  The free ride portion is where you’ll spend most of your time and it contains three types of challenges within: Session, Trick or Die, Stick a Trick.  Trick or Die has you beating another rider’s score by pulling off a trick with certain guidelines like grab, flip or slide, etc.  Stick a Trick has you performing a number of tricks shown on the screen before time runs out.  Session has you doing tricks in an attempt to get as high a score as possible as you barrel down the mountainside.  Winning enough Session points earns you a helicopter to control around the mountain.

Competitions are either races or media sponsorship challenges.  Races pit you against one of the many pro riders this game offers like Wolle Nyvelt and Nicholas Mueller.  Media sponsorship challenges vary in rules, but all of them have you performing various tricks in front of a camera.  Winning any of the above challenges earn you influence points which attract more media and sponsorship.  This eventually earns players more clothing in the customizer and more challenges on the previously completed mountains.

Tricks are easy to perform with ollie’s, flips and shifty’s done with a combination of left and right stick movements.  Grabs are done by holding the right and left triggers with each representing the rider’s hands respectively.  Tail grinds can be performed by pulling back on the right stick and jumps by pushing forward on the right stick.  Every trick can be managed through the combinations of the above and takes some practice to do them on the fly.  The case contains a grab bible that shows all the available tricks to help players.

Races are a welcome addition.

I wasn’t able to get many online impressions because no one seemed to be playing this game.  The one time I was able to catch some online players, they left each online match before the end of it.  The game doesn’t penalize losing players for leaving a game early so I found myself getting bailed on every time I was ahead in score.  It’s a shame really because it’s a lot of fun and the many types of challenges would offer a great opportunity for continual online play.   

Highlights

Stoked: Big Air Editionis a massive game.  Players will definitely get their money's worth here.  There are seven mountains with over 75 challenges on each of them.  On top of that, more challenges open up on previous mountains as you progress with the unlocked ones.  Some trick challenges can be done quickly while others will take much more patience and practice.  It will easily take you over 30 hours to complete every challenge and competition here.

Graphics are also one of the strong points in Stoked: Big Air Edition.  The snow related effects look stunning and the mountains themselves are heavily populated with trees and other architecture.  As your board cuts through the snow when travelling down a mountain, it leaves a trail that remains there if you restart the level.  When your character falls, he slowly gets clumped with snow that remains on his clothes throughout the challenge you’re competing in.  Weather effects are great and the day and night cycles add even more depth and realism to this already great looking game.

Get to the choppa!

The soundtrack to Stoked: Big Air Edition is definitely worthy of note.  Don’t be discouraged if you haven’t heard of bands like Kaskade, Colossus, Quietdrive or A Kiss Could Be Deadly. The fact that I’d never heard of any of them did not decrease how awesome some of the songs included here were.  There is a great mix available, ranging from pop to rock, rap, reggae and even tunes from the 80’s. Changing songs can be done on the fly during play and you can also remove genres that you’re less fond of from your in-game playlist. 

Upon starting any of the modes, players are given an intro via helicopter with details on the mountain and weather conditions they should expect as they attempt to tackle it.  This is a nice feature and adds an authentic feel to the game.  Upon loading each game, players are also shown the temperature, weather forecast and number of inches of accumulated snow on the selected mountain.  It’s not much, but it’s a nice touch that adds to the amount of realism that this game offers.

My only real complaint with Stoked: Big Air Edition is its extremely heavy focus on tricks.  Trick or Die, Stick a Trick, Session and the media challenges are all essentially the same mode.  The player must perform the displayed trick, score enough points with tricks or perform variations of tricks with certain parameters.  With over 75 events on each mountain and all but eight based on performing tricks, it feels extremely repetitive. A better mix of racing and tricks or a hybrid of both would have been a welcome addition here to help break that up.

Overall

Stoked: Big Air Edition is a breath of fresh snow-covered mountain air.  It’s by far the best playing snowboarding game on the Xbox 360 and its realism is unmatched by any other snowboarding game in existence.  Although it can be repetitive at times, you can’t argue with the amount of stuff to do here.

ComicsOnline gives Stoked: Big Air Edition 4.5 out of 5 Huck landings.

Buy Stoked: Big Air Edition for Xbox 360 at Amazon.com now.

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