Stoked: Big Air Edition Review

I remember back in the days of the PS1, a game called Cool Boarders ruled the slopes. It actually gave me an interest in snowboarding. Barreling down mountains, grinding rails and flying off of half pipes, all while punching your opponents off of their boards made for a fun and memorable experience. Ten years later, Stoked: Big Air Edition is one of three snowboarding titles on the Xbox 360, and given the lack of variety, it’s not a terrible choice.

This game does not really have much in the way of goals and end gratification, but it is a fun romp for what is presented to you. One of the main problems I found was the serious repetition involved in the main campaign. Dropping in from a helicopter and boarding on a generic mountain can only be fun so many times. The physics have a tendency to feel very unrealistic and at times, the controls feel totally unresponsive.

There is online multiplayer, yet not a lot of people own this title, so finding a match in under two minutes can come close to impossible. The best times on this game are to be had in a room with a few of your buddies. However, if you want the best challenge out of your time with this game, set up single runs with weather near blizzard conditions, and make sure it’s night time. If you can get a decently high score with those settings, congratulations, you’ve seen the most this game has to offer.

Bongfish’s snowboarding offering does look pretty in the right light, but all in all it doesn’t feel much like a next-gen title. Trees and other assorted landscaping look strange and off color. The character models look better than the previous edition, but are still lacking heavily in realism. Something about the audio feels off, both with actual snowboarding sounds and voice-overs. The voice-overs are especially bad, but superb quality can’t be expected from such a low budget effort.

Stoked: Big Air Edition is more of a redux of the original Stoked rather than a successor. The franchise is low budget, both in production and price. The going price tag is around 30 dollars, depending on where you go, but consumers should rent this title first. There is a slight tweak in graphics and physics, as well as weather effects and character models. However, this game obviously still has lots of work left before it can become the full snowboarding experience.