Brevity
11-14-2005, 02:44 PM
360: Amped 3 Review
http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3145673&did=1
Amped 3 wants to ride with the cool kids so badly it hurts; only you're the one who winds up doing the wincing. It brings to mind all those guys who co-starred in 80's Molly Ringwold flicks. You know the ones: They dorked out the whole way through the films and then, at the end, figured out that they actually were OK doing what they did best and all the rest just came off making them look ridiculous. Amped 3 reaches the same conclusion (and yes, that makes it the Anthony Michael Hall of videogames).
Like those characters, the issue isn't the core premise. The snowboarding action holds up its end of the deal. It's in the transparent, heavy-handed attempt to create a hip style that all goes wrong, highlighted by a bizarre in-your-face story mode. Too much late-night cable TV augmented with who knows what else resulted in a pop culture psychedelic mishmash à la Pee-Wee's Playhouse multiplied by about ten. It's chock full of sock puppet theater, French pantomime humor, stop action films with action figures and stupid accent anime parodies just to name a few.
It might not be so bad to put up with the menu and loading screen art, but you have to play through story mode to unlock all the areas. If nothing else, by the time you get around halfway through it's all so agonizingly bad that it becomes laughable. Some of the annoying challenges you have to complete to advance, though, are not. Awkward sledding, snowmobiling and hang gliding segments not only frustrate advancement, but leave you wondering why such annoying parts were put into a snowboarding game. At least the whole affair only takes a few hours, after which you'll be able to move on to the snowboarding you came for in the first place.
And that part is pretty solid. Amped 3 does a nice job of making you feel like you're up on the mountain at a ski resort and free to go pretty much where you want to. A trail map, just like you'd pick up in real life, shows you all the lifts and calls out events you can do. Select one and a second button press takes you right to the closest lift ready to drop in. And there are plenty to keep you busy. From photographers looking to shoot you pulling a certain trick to a number of skill tests, like those from the story mode, you won't run out of high-score opportunities. But you can also just board around if you want, impressing the rest of the skiers on the hill.
Unlike the ill-fated attempt at over-the-top style, the trick system retains its conventional roots. You can get some truly sick air allowing combos you'd never hit on actual powder, but the moves themselves are all more or less believable. A variety of grabs and grinds are initiated by combinations of the X, Y and B buttons. Timing comes into play to link them together and the subtle half-push of the left stick to pull a "style" trick is back as well. Along with the balance meter for grinding rails, the Tony Hawk influence continues with the addition of "butter" board tricks that can be performed anytime you're on the ground by rocking the stick back and forwards. Skillful use of these will let you keep chains going to rack up major points.
Like the action, the visuals tend to the conservative side. It's not that any of it looks bad. Draw distances stretch way down runs, and, for that matter it all moves super smooth with equally responsive controls. The one big technical complaint is that the camera gets into some bad angles, particularly in uphill situations, and you can not easily reposition it.
But neither does any of it scream "next-generation" at you. The textures and character models are more detailed, and there's more going on in the environments, but it all looks more like a high-resolution version of what you'd find in current games. For instance, the top of a snow-covered peak would be the perfect place to showoff some of the 360's awesome lighting effects for the over-exposure from glare reflected off of the snow, but they aren't there.
Of all the missed opportunity, the most mystifying is the lack of Live multiplayer -- a feature its Xbox predecessor, Amped 2, made great use of. It defies common sense how a feature so well suited to the game's day-on-the-slopes feel has actually been dropped in the move to more advanced hardware.
Adolescents are like that, though. They just do things you don't get as they go through their growing pains, and Amped 3 is definitely in the midst of its own. The crazy displays for attention and rebellious personality leave little doubt of that. Underneath the show there's still a snowboarding game that's fun to hang out with, but only in doses.
7.0
__________________
http://www.1up.com/do/reviewPage?cId=3145673&did=1
Amped 3 wants to ride with the cool kids so badly it hurts; only you're the one who winds up doing the wincing. It brings to mind all those guys who co-starred in 80's Molly Ringwold flicks. You know the ones: They dorked out the whole way through the films and then, at the end, figured out that they actually were OK doing what they did best and all the rest just came off making them look ridiculous. Amped 3 reaches the same conclusion (and yes, that makes it the Anthony Michael Hall of videogames).
Like those characters, the issue isn't the core premise. The snowboarding action holds up its end of the deal. It's in the transparent, heavy-handed attempt to create a hip style that all goes wrong, highlighted by a bizarre in-your-face story mode. Too much late-night cable TV augmented with who knows what else resulted in a pop culture psychedelic mishmash à la Pee-Wee's Playhouse multiplied by about ten. It's chock full of sock puppet theater, French pantomime humor, stop action films with action figures and stupid accent anime parodies just to name a few.
It might not be so bad to put up with the menu and loading screen art, but you have to play through story mode to unlock all the areas. If nothing else, by the time you get around halfway through it's all so agonizingly bad that it becomes laughable. Some of the annoying challenges you have to complete to advance, though, are not. Awkward sledding, snowmobiling and hang gliding segments not only frustrate advancement, but leave you wondering why such annoying parts were put into a snowboarding game. At least the whole affair only takes a few hours, after which you'll be able to move on to the snowboarding you came for in the first place.
And that part is pretty solid. Amped 3 does a nice job of making you feel like you're up on the mountain at a ski resort and free to go pretty much where you want to. A trail map, just like you'd pick up in real life, shows you all the lifts and calls out events you can do. Select one and a second button press takes you right to the closest lift ready to drop in. And there are plenty to keep you busy. From photographers looking to shoot you pulling a certain trick to a number of skill tests, like those from the story mode, you won't run out of high-score opportunities. But you can also just board around if you want, impressing the rest of the skiers on the hill.
Unlike the ill-fated attempt at over-the-top style, the trick system retains its conventional roots. You can get some truly sick air allowing combos you'd never hit on actual powder, but the moves themselves are all more or less believable. A variety of grabs and grinds are initiated by combinations of the X, Y and B buttons. Timing comes into play to link them together and the subtle half-push of the left stick to pull a "style" trick is back as well. Along with the balance meter for grinding rails, the Tony Hawk influence continues with the addition of "butter" board tricks that can be performed anytime you're on the ground by rocking the stick back and forwards. Skillful use of these will let you keep chains going to rack up major points.
Like the action, the visuals tend to the conservative side. It's not that any of it looks bad. Draw distances stretch way down runs, and, for that matter it all moves super smooth with equally responsive controls. The one big technical complaint is that the camera gets into some bad angles, particularly in uphill situations, and you can not easily reposition it.
But neither does any of it scream "next-generation" at you. The textures and character models are more detailed, and there's more going on in the environments, but it all looks more like a high-resolution version of what you'd find in current games. For instance, the top of a snow-covered peak would be the perfect place to showoff some of the 360's awesome lighting effects for the over-exposure from glare reflected off of the snow, but they aren't there.
Of all the missed opportunity, the most mystifying is the lack of Live multiplayer -- a feature its Xbox predecessor, Amped 2, made great use of. It defies common sense how a feature so well suited to the game's day-on-the-slopes feel has actually been dropped in the move to more advanced hardware.
Adolescents are like that, though. They just do things you don't get as they go through their growing pains, and Amped 3 is definitely in the midst of its own. The crazy displays for attention and rebellious personality leave little doubt of that. Underneath the show there's still a snowboarding game that's fun to hang out with, but only in doses.
7.0
__________________