Game Reviews

Snowboard Party

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iOS
| Snowboard Party
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Snowboard Party
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iOS
| Snowboard Party

The PlayStation era was the heyday of extreme sports games. Titles like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Cool Boarders set a template that's remained largely unchanged for more than a decade.

And it's a template that Snowboard Party adheres to slavishly. The buttons might be onscreen, but you're still mashing together combinations to perform extravagant flips, spins, and grabs.

There's the obligatory alternative rock soundtrack as well, and a wide range of tracks for you to play through and unlock.

It does everything reasonably well, even making some concessions for touchscreen controls, and presenting everything in solid if unremarkable 3D.

But the flair of those early trend-setters is lacking, and while it's an entertaining ride, it's unlikely to stick in the memory very long.

BYOB

You take control of a boarder who's sliding down a ramp-covered snowy course. It's up to you to pull off tricks, flipping and grinding your way up the highscore table.

A joystick on the left of the screen controls your movement, and four buttons on the right control your tricks. Two of them pull off grabs, a third performs grind, and the fourth and biggest lets you jump in the air.

Combining a direction press with a grab button lets you spin through the air while holding onto your board. Different directions perform different tricks, and pulling back or pushing forward sends you flipping.

Grinding brings up a balance meter that you need to keep roughly in the centre by tapping the joystick to prolong your slide. With practice you can chain together jumps, flips, and grinds to score ridiculous points.

Party etiquette

There are three different modes available – freestyle, half-pipe, and big air. They all play out in roughly similar ways, albeit with slightly different obstacle sets.

Big air gives you a series of massive ramps to jump off, half-pipe gives you a half-pipe, and freestyle mixes up the two and adds some more organic elements as well.

Each level has a series of objectives you need to complete. Some of these involve getting above a certain score or chaining together a set of tricks, and the letters of the word party are also strewn across each level for you to collect.

The more objectives you complete, the more EXP you earn. You can spend this on improving your boarder and unlocking other characters, boards, and outfits.

Leave early

And it all gels together quite nicely. The problem is there's too much of a disconnection between you and the snow. It all just feels a bit too easy. Within seconds of picking up the game you'll be pulling off huge tricks with ease.

While the complex combinations of button presses that define the genre would be difficult on touchscreen, the solution here is to make everything accessible with a couple of taps.

All you need to do to land is make sure you let go of your trick before you reach the ground.

There's fun to be had in Snowboard Party, but it's a simple fun, a quick-bash 1080 spin with a few grabs thrown in before heading off to do something a little more challenging.

If you're not impressed by the complexity of games like Touchgrind Skate 2, there's a lot to like here. But it never quite snaps its compulsion loop down hard enough, and after a few ostentatious backflips you'll probably have seen enough.

Snowboard Party

There's fun to be had with Snowboard Party, but after a while you'll probably pull out your PlayStation and play some of the much better games that inspired it
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.