Still got that balance board that came with Wii Fit? You remember Wii Fit, that game that was going to get you into shape? The one you played for a few weeks and then forgot all about? Well, get that balance board out, because there is finally something fun to do with it.
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip isn’t the first snow-bound balance board game, that honor goes to We Ski. But Road Trip has won the title of ”first balance board game that is actually fun.”
The Controls: Lean, Tilt, Spin
Missions in Road Trip involve winning a race or getting a high score through tricks. Racing is straight forward; you steer mainly with your back foot, while leaning forward increases your speed and lessens your control. It takes a while to get the hang of, and at first I kept turning my board sideways and stopping my own momentum, but eventually I got the hang of it, more or less.
Tricks involve jumping and spinning around and over in the air, or riding rails. You don’t jump on the balance board (which would damage it) but rather shift your weight down then up to make your snowboarding avatar jump. You control your spin by the way you lean on the board, and push buttons on the Wii remote to make the tricks fancier.
None of this is particularly complex, and you will learn the basics quickly, but it’s all difficult to get right, and I found myself crashing to the ground quite often, my avatar standing up covered in snow from head to foot.
If you don’t have a balance board, you can still play the game with your Wii remote. You simply tilt the remote from side to side to steer and flick it up, down and to the sides for tricks. It’s a very nice system, and feels more fun and dynamic than the traditional controls you would use on another console, but obviously it isn’t as compelling as actually standing on a board and using your body to steer it. On the other hand, it also isn’t nearly as exhausting.
Not Much for Extras and Rewards, but a Solid Offering
The player has a choice of snowboarding avatars with varied strengths. You choose one avatar to snowboard and another to follow with a camera (the presumption is what the player is seeing is actually the video footage of the snowboarder following him or her). Each avatar has a special camera skill that can give you a boost in some aspect of your snowboarding. Of course, it makes utterly no sense that your performance would be affected by a nearby snowboarder, but Road Trip doesn’t seem to care.
Winning challenges opens up new challenges and also gives the player email to read. The email would like to be described as humorous, but it falls far short of that lofty goal, and reading it feels less like a reward than it does an annoyance. A reward to customize the look of your avatar or your snowboard would have been far more satisfying.
Road Trip is a nice looking game, with clean lines, wide expanses of white snow and the occasional a moose galloping past you. It offers an engaging experience and gives you a workout to boot. Buying the game means finally having a fun reason to take that balance board out of the closet and, this time, not putting it back in.
