Stoked
Stoked for Xbox 360 by Destineer, and developed by Bongfish, brings you the thrill of back country snowboarding and the chance to explore real-world locales in the comfort of your living room. With five huge renowned mountains all yours to play with, Stoked lets you bypass the typical stale resorts for a unique and exhilarating ride experience every time.
Stoked gives you five full mountains to explore and ride. View larger. |
Snow accumulates on the ground, changing the terrain in real time. View larger. |
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Take photos of other snowboarders doing spectacular jumps and tricks. View larger. |
Perform different tricks and develop your own style. View larger. |
Real Riders, Real Sponsors, Real Mountains
Stoked gives you a taste of the real thing, with authenticity stamped all over the game. Renowned riders such as Nicolas Mueller, Travis Rice, Annie Boulanger, Wolle Nyvelt, Tadashi Fuse, and Romain de Marchi are featured in the game, as well as popular sponsors such as Burton, Von Zipper, Billabong, Oakley, Vans, and more. Throughout the game, you’ll have opportunities to customize your character and his or her style.
The real stars, however, are the five mountains: Mt. Fuji, Alaska, Mt. Shuksan, Almirante Nieto, and Diablerets in the Swiss Alps. On each peak, you’ll have more than 45 square-miles of open terrain to explore, and with the help of a helicopter, you’ll be able to find new drop points.
As you ride, you’ll have to complete different challenges on each run. You’ll be able to perform a wide variety of tricks that run the gamut from jumps to grinds to grabs, all with the analog sticks for a great amount of control.
Dynamic Weather Changes That Affect Gameplay
The weather changes unpredictably in real time and affects the game. The game clock is tied to the real world clock, so if you turn the game on at 10PM, you’ll be doing some night riding, while you’ll be ready for some glare when you ride at noon. If it is snowing, you’ll actually notice the snow accumulate onto the ground over time, opening up new paths and opportunities for different tricks. Going down the same path can be a wildly different experience!
Get Famous and Have Others Mimic You
As you progress in the game and become famous, other riders will start mimicking your style. Whether you are a hucker or stylish snowboarder, you’ll notice riders on your mountain emulate you. You’ll also notice, as you develop your own style, that your own idiosyncrasies change both in the air and on the ground.
Go On a Group Ride with Your Friends
You can invite your friends for an instant drop-in at any time, and create cooperative and competitive challenges starting from custom drop points. There are also Xbox Live sponsored events where you can put yourself up against other boarders to gain more fame.
Take Photos of Your Surroundings and Other Riders
If you ever take a breather while riding, you can whip out your camera and take photos of your surroundings or other snowboarders pulling off tricks. When playing multiplayer, you’ll be able to take pictures of your friends doing tricks — or a face plant — and send them along.
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars Another snowboard game that just doesn’t quite meet the “Skate” Bar
Everyone knows it, the Skate series has set the bar for board sports games. Stoked is like the fat guy at the limbo, just barely makes it under the bar then scratches his belly on the stick and looses. I’ve been playing Stoked for a few weeks now and I’m enjoying it, but it’s hella slow, reward system, and challenges are kinda weak. It’s definitely not motivating me to rush home and play every day, much like the before mentioned Skate series.
What is good:
- Open mountains. Pretty sick how you can go anywhere, once you get the trick system down you can really throw down, especially on some of the bigger mountains. Once you get the heli it’s on. Just drop yourself off wherever and rip it. I heard they are GPS mapped. Pretty sick to ride Mount Shuksan being that I grew up at Baker, but err, not sure how accurate it is.
- Free riding. Screw points, cheevo’s, and all that hoopla. If you’re a snowboarder, you’ll probably just dig trying to trick off big hits, changing up the cam and watching yourself rip. Weather system is kinda cool. First day I got a 4ft powder dump I went mad just slashing up the pow and checking out the helicopter view.
- Multi player with your buddies. First night my friends and I synced up we found a nice keekor and had a session, taking turns snapping photos. Everyone was having a great time and laughing our butts off. Pretty much what we do when we go ride BC kickers for real. A couple nights later we just got together and started following each others favorite lines. Kinda rad to have a game which you actually go discover favorite lines, much like you’d do on a real hill.
Bad:
-Feedback system. There’s no clue when you are advancing to the next “level” really. I must have beat challenges for hours until I finally got into the sponsor challenges. By that point I was kinda annoyed.
-Lack of good challenges. Just kinda repeats itself. I really hate the whole “do this specific trick” kinda challenges too. Some of them are so hard it’s not even funny. 1990 called, Damian Sanders wants his Iguana backflip back, this game’s not worthy. That and the whole lame rail stuff could’ve just been left out instead of being a major challenge factor. This game is really going for a whole freeride snowboarding perspective but then you gotta go slide logs to beat challenges. They could’ve just put park levels in if they really felt the need to put in rails.
-Sloowww. Did I mention that this game is slow? Seriously ridiculously slow. When is something gonna happen already.
Overall, this game is fun, but isn’t going floor you with it’s spectacular raddness. It tries to adopt the Skate controls system, but kinda falls flat.
If you dedicate a few hours and get through the slow beginning, the fun will kick in. I probably like it more than most just cause I’ve been snowboarding for 25 years. That and since I only paid $35 for the game, I didn’t feel like I got robbed for not getting the most epic game ever.
What do I know though, I was impressed when HEAVY SHREDDIN’ hit the NES, I played that POS till my thumbs went numb.
4 Stars Hmm, I’m not a snowboarder…
Alright, I got this game because I really needed something different. I’ve driven for thousands of miles, head-shot millions of people, boosted countless cars… I needed a change.
I like Stoked. It definitely gave me a change of pace. The graphics are good an they’re thoughtful - your guy gets covered with snow when he wipes out, or when it’s snowing hard. He shakes his head when he wipes out - it’s creative and realistic. Supposedly the weather is dynamic - I’ve seen it be cloudy, then turn sunny. Every once in a while it snows, but not too often. I haven’t seen a lot of options for customizing, but I hear that improves as time goes on.
The mountains are HUGE, but tend to be somewhat sparse. You feel like you ski forever with nothing to jump from. The problem is I’m trying to look for obvious jumps, when many point-grabbing activities in Stoked aren’t readily obvious. You’ve gotta get a little more creative. The option is there, but for a rookie, I’m not used to it just yet.
The biggest problem I have with Stoked is that I’ve never snowboarded in my life. The tricks all have titles, and I’ve never heard of them before. The manual or in-game “bible” helps a little bit, but simple terms like “switch” mean nothing to me. I have no idea what it’s asking me to do. I go online to try to find help, and find other players getting laughed at because they don’t know what the terms mean. That’s bull. I could talk circles around these people when it comes to automotive terminology - can’t we just be nice and answer the questions?
I too found the first few hours to be boring - and challenging - as I learmed the basics, both trick-wise and terminology-wise. I’ve read that the game opens up after your first 66 fame points, which I just earned. So we’ll see what happens.
If you’re a snowboarder, you’ll probably like this game. If it’s as Greek to you as it is to me, you might have trouble getting into it.
5 Stars best snowboarding game to date
This is by far the best and most fun game on the market. For those who have played the Skate games then it will be extremely easy to get used to this game as the controls are very similar as is the overall playability of the game. There are many different mountains from around the globe as the levels. As mentioned, you do different challenges that are comparable to the ones from Amped 2. Speaking of which, in my opinion was the best game until this one came out and still holds down the solid number two spot. You are able to ride any part of the mountain and do all sorts of tricks. You can go fast and huge! Once you get 50,000 points on every run you unlock the ability to fly the helicopter for that mountain! This lets you fly around until you find a line that looks sick and jump out and ride it! There are tons of cool features but the main thing is this game is just freakin awesome. The best, most fun snowboarding game out there.
3 Stars Could have been great!
After playing Shaun White and punching myself repeatadly in the face after an hour or so, I was really hoping this game would come through for the snowboarding game genre. I was wrong…sorta.
The good: I really enjoy the graphics and the dynamic weather of the game. It really helps with the immersion. I also like the VASTNESS of the mountains. It really looks and feels like it could be a real mountain (which I think they are), but that sort of hurts it in a way also. I will explain later.
I also like the multiplayer in the aspect of the jump-in jump-out system. Lag wasn’t a big issue. But that is really the only good part of it. You may be online with other players, but it still feels lonely on the big mountain. If they had better challenges it may be more entertaining.
The other thing I liked, which really gave me high hopes from the tutorial, is the controls. I enjoy Skate and Skate 2 and the awesome control scheme set out in both. The Stoked controls are similar in the way you ollie, grab and manual, which is outstanding! It made it enjoyable to play the beginning of the game.
The way they inplemented the Hucker and Stylish system is cool too, but to me there really was no incentive to go the Stylish route. In Hucker style you pre-load your spins and perform multiple grabs in one jump. In Stylish you do slow spins with a grab. To get any points it is best to go with Hucker. I was really having a hard time with Style and trying to do a large point combo. Just my opinion, but love how the pre-loading of the spins is implemented.
The Bad: Hmm..Where to start? About an hour into the game I had completed 30 or so challenges on the first mountain, and was sooooo bored. There are only 3 types of challenges from what I have experienced so far.
A high-score challenge doing only the types of tricks marked in the top left part of your screen off the particular ramp (i.e. Get 1500 points by doing a spin grap, or a flip, or just a grab, etc…).
Another challenge type is doing a particular trick off the given ramp or grind (i.e. Stalefish Tucknee, Frontside 540, etc..)This is pretty frustrating as the trick guide in the start menu is really annoying and hard to use at first.
The only other challenge I have encountered is the Pro Challenge which is unlocked by doing certain actions during your session down the mountain. I stumbled onto this by accident, as it wasn’t clear in the tutorial and who reads the instruction booklets nowadays anyways? lol. This challenge pits you against the pro in a downhill session where you repeat tricks and get a higher score than the said pro. I HATE these types of challenges. Especially when every trick isn’t known. This is just my opinion.
The challenges get old real quick considering you repeat the same challenge types over and over and over again on the mountain with only a changing ramp or grind. Grinding is frustrating also. The physics behind it bother me.
As with the physics overall. It feels alright, but when you think you are hauling arse and see a potential big jump ahead, prepare for it, ollie and only get about 2 feet of air and that double backflip turns into a half flip to bail (which the bails are also really lame)you start shaking your head and wondering “WHY ME?!”.
I really wanted to like it and did for the first hour or so. I just couldn’t overcome the boredome I felt. It is just a game with really big mountains with pretty snow and solid controls. I suppose it is worth the 37.99, but if I had a demo I wouldn’t have bothered purchasing. Just my opinions, but it mirrors some of the more prominent reviewers.
5 Stars love this game
As a snowboarder, I feel this may be the best snowboarding game made yet. I think people who don’t really snowboard or who only stick to the terrain parks may not appreciate the game to the fullest. It does take a loooooong time to get into some of the more interesting challenges and some of them are extremely difficult– but that is a good thing!