In safer territory you can bury others with snowballs, which can be thrown at fellow riders while you're running around or even as you're riding past them. Just don't think you can start acting like the mountain is a snowy version of Grand Theft Auto; if you start pelting strangers with snowballs long enough, the AI will definitely react with a snowball to the back of your beanie-covered head.
If you've never felt the joy of hitting your friends with snowballs, the online capabilities of Shaun White Snowboarding will ensure that you get the opportunity. Players will be able to go online and ride in groups of up to 16 friends, and you can find friends online at any time and immediately join them where they're riding, wherever they are. Once you're with your buds, you can make wagers with each other... whoever finishes first in the competition you choose will earn money they can use to upgrade their gear. You'll also be able to save your best runs and show them off to your friends online.
When it comes to competitions, there are races, trick-filled mountain runs and half-pipes. While you can pull off spins, grabs and delicious tricks with names like melon, roast beef or stale fish, Shaun White Snowboarding differs from snowboarding games like SSX in that, while the tricks are sufficiently exaggerated as they should be in a videogame, it doesn't devolve into a whirlwind of button-pushing and spinning off sharp rocks that would break most snowboards. And while the game is accessible to the beginner, it took us a few runs to get the hang of how to pull off grabs, land fancier tricks and jump off the correct objects. For example, we learned on the first run that you can't just do a flip off of a flat area of powder while traveling slowly unless you really enjoy doing face plants in the snow.
Part of the challenge of the game is keeping upright during your long forays down the mountain. If you crash, the word "Amateur" comes up on the screen and your score goes back to zero, although the score you had been earning up to that point does get banked to your character, so not all is lost. When White decided to work with Ubisoft on the game, he let the Montreal developers know he wanted it to feature more than impossible tricks on uniform courses; he wanted the game to represent how he feels about the action sport to which he's dedicated much of his young life to (when he isn't skating, that is). So while you won't suffer debilitating injuries when you crash, there is a balance between pushing the limits and being somewhat realistic. After all, with views and graphics this good, it would be a waste not to lend that realism to the rest of the game.
With all that in mind, it looks like Ubisoft has created a snowboard gaming experience that should keep riders busy all winter while resting between trips to their favorite resort. It seems like this isn't a game that makes snowboarding seem like a cartoon, but one that celebrates the sport for what it truly is: a big wonderful world with its own culture, language, games and lifestyle, where riders seek not just an adrenaline rush, but also friendship and the freedom to ride wherever they want, whenever they want. If Shaun White Snowboarding succeeds in showing what it's truly like to live and ride like White, the game will be considered a winner too -- just like the red-headed star on the cover.
