Shaun White Snowboarding hits the slopes on PSP
Looks good, but is it just another run-of-the-mill 'boarding game?
Shaun White Snowboarding on PSP seems to have slid past us so fast we didn't even notice it was coming. Although maybe it's not just us – most retailers only have it listed for PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii, too. But unless IGN has made up its preview and screenshots for a laugh, it definitely does seem to be on its way to the Sony handheld.
According to the site whose team has got to play the game, Shaun White's stand out feature is its visuals. The character models and environments are all looking super-polished on PSP, the frame-rate is strong and steady and motion blur gives the illusion you're speeding down mountains faster than Eddie the Eagle on silicone-coated glass skis
Like most other games of its ilk, Shaun White Snowboarding's character progression is based on a kind of experience point system. However, the game uses stickers as well. So you can earn points to be distributed across four categories, such as jumping and cornering, but there are also three sticker slots per board that act as power-ups.
Other than that, the game has all the usual features you'd expect. This includes plenty of tricks, pulled off using a mixture of the face and trigger buttons, and rails to grind by maintaining balance on a swaying meter that pops up in the centre of the screen. Score multipliers are in there, too, encouraging you to pull off combos and string together tricks, as is a list of challenges to complete.
Despite all that, IGN concludes it looks good but feels a bit run-of-the-mill.
Of course, we'll have a final verdict for you at review time. Which, if Ubisoft is releasing it here in the UK at the same time as the home console versions (as it seems to be doing in the US), will be on November 14th.
