Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip Hands-On

The Nintendo Wii has always offered a unique approach to gaming, and with the advent of the Wii Balance Board, this trend now also applies to the realm of action sports as well. Developed by Ubisoft, Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip uses the Wii accessory and will likely offer a new twist to the traditional tricking experience.

While from a pure graphical standpoint the Wii version won't stack up to its Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 counterparts, the graphics are top-notch in comparison to other Wii titles, and the game's presentation is clean and it's easy to navigate. Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip provides a fast frame rate to complement its fast pace.

When you're using the Wii Balance Board, the controls in Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip will take an adjustment period, especially if you haven't used the accessory before. Unlike a real snowboard, the Balance Board won't register anything except the proportional weight on different areas of the board. Therefore, you can't twist your body or jump as you can in real snowboarding. Instead, these controls are mapped to the Wii Remote and may not be intuitive. While we had difficulty executing fancy tricks via the Balance Board, gamers who have used the board before may not experience as steep of a learning curve. Of course, you can also play the game with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk in case the Balance Board is too extreme for your tastes.

Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip offers both single-player and multiplayer gaming. The single-player storyline is consistent with the game's title--you travel the globe participating in the various extreme events to become the world's best snowboarder. Shaun White serves as your mentor throughout the story as you transform from a young up-and-comer to a snowboarding legend. Shaun will start you off with the basic skills you'll need to compete, and as the story progresses he'll introduce you to various snowboarders who join your world tour and share special abilities and tricks to give you an edge against the competition.

While Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip doesn't offer online play, it does offer two- to four-player multiplayer, both cooperatively and competitively. You can compete in all of the same challenge events that you can in single-player, ranging from big air and half-pipe competitions to downhill and slalom races. If formal competitions aren't your thing, you can also simply board at your leisure with your buddies to see who can amass the most trick points.

Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip presents a unique snowboarding experience to those willing to give the Wii Balance Board a try. While the game may not be as pick-up-and-play-friendly as other Wii games (especially if you elect to use the Wii Balance Board), it should provide a challenging and rewarding experience for those willing to give it a try. Look for more on the Wii version of Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip in the coming weeks as we lead up to its November release.