Amped 3 Preview

Extreme sports have made quite an impact on videogames over the last few years, what with your Tony Hawk, SSX and Amped games. Much like the outrageous real-life activities these games portray, Amped 3 is also seriously crazy, but in a good way. In fact, it may be the zaniest game I’ve ever seen. It hits you from the moment it boots up, with a kaleidoscope of colours fired at you from every angle, intermixed with differing graphical styles attacking your brain – it could be said that influences have come from such eclectic sources as The Yellow Submarine and Trumpton. Yes, it really is bizarre.

Stripped of its zaniness, Amped 3 is a fun snowboarding game, and somewhat less complicated that the previous two games in the series. In a nod to other extreme sports games nowadays (most notably the Tony Hawk series), Amped 3 has a linear story mode, with you as the star. After deciding upon your look and other superficial details, you’re thrust into the campaign, in which your aim is to make enough money to get to Chile and hook up with your crew.

You’ll work your way through a total of six different mountains, each with an abundance of trails, performing various challenges and tricks along the way. The structure of the game is such that you can go for random rides down the mountain, try a challenge mission, or go straight for the story missions (all of which are appropriately marked for you). There is also an option to place objects of your choice (including sofas and igloos) on the course for you to perform even more insane tricks on, although to do so requires points that are earned throughout the game. This addition allows you to create your own unique course, although there are no plans to allow these to be traded amongst your peers over Xbox Live.

The action itself is very much like the aforementioned Tony Hawk games; you’ll generally be performing various tricks and combos, maybe to impress a watching photographer, or as part of a challenge to out-trick a pro-snowboarder. Challenges and missions seem to offer plenty of scope and variety, such as chasing after a yeti, a run through slalom gates, or attaining a certain amount of points on a run down the mountain. Some challenges also allow a second player to get in on the action, such as the ‘crash’ missions, whereby the winner is the player who does the most damage to their bodies, with scores presented with an x-ray of your body, identifying all the bones you broke.

Graphically things look good; the draw distance is fantastic and the character models adhere to the offbeat style of the game. Being set on a mountain, you’d be forgiven for thinking that everything would just be white, but there is a certain vibrancy that helps to make the mountain feel much more alive than a snow-covered peak perhaps should. A healthy smattering of onlookers and other boarders helps to enhance that feeling, although – possibly to help with the flow of the game – these people can be passed through as though they aren’t there. The actual snowboard suffered from some clipping issues, but it was nothing that would hamper your enjoyment of the title too much. Sound is as you’d expect, with the requisite ‘whooshes’ and ‘screeches’ and a staggering amount of indie artists featured on the soundtrack, following the tradition of the earlier titles in the series – over 300 different tracks are included which should cater for all tastes.

The actual game is solid enough, without being remarkable. Despite portraying an activity that involves going downhill on an object with little friction against a slippery surface, the game doesn’t offer a real sense of speed. This can be forgiven due to the nature of the courses and setting, and more so because of the need to be able to perform various tricks to amaze the crowds. The controls felt comfortable enough, although turns were a little sluggish, but generally everything felt competent. The range of moves you can perform seems adequate, and there are plenty of obstacles for you to ride, grind and slide down – certainly enough to enable you to show-off your awesomeness (as used in the game) to all around you. How much longevity this will offer, given that the scenery will never change that much, will very much be governed by how obsessive you are over scores, combos and the like. Amped 3 isn’t a racer; although timed missions and challenges are present and correct, it’s all about style. And this is nowhere more prevalent than in the various cutscenes and interludes.

It’s probably fair to say that this is where the love has been expended. Whilst you have normal in-engine cutscenes, the real fun is in the FMV. Actually, to call it FMV seems wholly inappropriate, because of the brilliant and inventive use of alternative approaches used to convey what is happening. During the course of the game you can expect to see stop-start animation, sock puppets, a rap-artist and many other styles, and whilst true comedy in games is rare, I can’t deny that some of the stuff I saw was genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. It’s worth noting that Amped 3 certainly has a fantastic schizophrenia attached to its many visual identities, and it really works in its favour.

After spending some time with Amped 3 I was in no doubt that the presentation will help endear the game to extreme sports fans, and will probably (or at least should be, given how unique it is) be a major selling point. Indeed, it may well be that many will want to persevere through the missions purely to see the next cutscene, over any excitement gleaned from a new unlockable or slightly different challenge. And that is no bad thing given the quality of the non-interactive portions of the game, but whether it’s enough to recommend the game is a matter for our review. Check back just after its December 2 release for our detailed thoughts.