boarding and blading

Amped 2 is a pretty good game. It has over 15 mountains, tons of challenges, great graphics, and tons of tricks. Its fun for people who like snowboarding games, and its a blast online, playing with up to 8 people. Here's what I thought of Amped 2: by Microsoft Game Studios...

1) Single Player: This game is similar to the original in terms of single player. You start out at rank 250, and work your way up to #1. Only this time, there are more challenges, more tracks, and several new ways to board. There are now 8 grabs (instead of the 2 in the first), and the ability to do a butter. What a butter does is connect 2 moves. So you can do a backflip, do a butter, then pull of a grind. It combines the 2 tricks for a better score. This can lead to a lot more customization. Not to mention the extra 6 grabs...

Amped 2 brings back High Score, Media Score, and trying to find all the Snow Men. It also adds finding the 5 gaps, and pulling off 5 special tricks. Once completing all of this, you can try to out-trick 3 pros, win over 3 sponsors, and do 3 photoshoots (very cool). Each thing you complete increases your rank, and once up to a certain rank (say 200), you can unlock a new track.

One thing about the single player is that it can get incredibly hard. Scoring hundreds of thousands of points, pulling off insane tricks, or trying to impress a very tough sponsor. Fortunantly, with each rank come new trick "point(s)", which you can use to improve your snowboarder. You can increase speed, rotation, air time, blance, and switch (similar to the Tony Hawk series). Spending the points wisely may be the difference between beating and failing the game...

The problem in single player though, is thats its so long, and so hard at times that you just want to give up (like the original). If you do keep trying though, you can beat it. It can just get a bit frustrating at times...

2) Online Play~ The online play is a blast in this game. You can race with up to 8 people in several game types: high score, king of the mountain (pulling off the best tricks on certain hills), and a tournament (which averages out everyones best tricks, high scores, media, etc.. #1, 2, 3...). The cool thing is that you can take you single player character online. So all that work you put in to beating the game is finally worth it. The graphics are great, there are rankings. So online play in this game is awsome. Especially if u love snowboarding

3) Graphics~ The graphics in this game are...amazing. Your character looks almost real (you can customize his or her hair, clothes, snowboard, etc.. And the color of everything). As you board, the snow shoots out from behind. You leave a trail of where you've been. When you grind, sparks fly out from the board. When you hit a tree, you knock snow off. The snow looks real, fun, exicting. Its a blast to board through and pave your way. The tricks look cool and realistic. The mountains you race on have birds, trees, tons of snow, camera men, rails, and buildings. It really does look like a boarding mountain, and adds to the game.

Overall this game is a blast. Better than the first, the online play and extremely long single player make this a great game that will last you for awhile. Reccomended for anyone who loves snowboarding (I might wait a month or 2 and wait for the price to drop tho). A good game that won't dissapoint.

Thx!

obryanstars*

There are two big snowboarding games on the Xbox - Amped 2 and SSX 3. According to most gamers, SSX 3 is more of an arcade style snowboarding game and Amped 2 is the realistic snowboard simulator. This also explains why SSX 3 usually gets better reviews and has a larger following. Maybe I'm an exception then because I started playing Amped 2 with no previous experience on SSX 3 nor knowledge about pro snowboarding and I quickly became hooked. I have played and replayed so many levels in this game, I now have "Xbox Thumb." If you're not familiar with the series, while you can just play a regular run, the best way is to start a career and slowly but surely you increase your snowboarder's national rank as well as his skills. Besides the numerous fun tracks and mountain runs, there are cool additional games such as photo shoot (you have to follow the hoops for a photo shoot and afterwards, your awesome moves are saved in a film), beat the pro (you follow a pro snowboarder's computer character downhill and have to one up him), and sponsor races (you have to impress your sponsor by doing certain tricks which that specific sponsor enjoys). I've played this game for days and I'm still learning new tricks and ways to interact with the environment. Another cool feature in Amped 2 is the Xbox Live option. You can either compete with other online gamers in a designated time on the same map or just join a server for casual play. I was surprised to find a good amount of people playing the game online. It's nowhere close to the numbers that play popular Xbox shooters but it's not a trival amount either. Overall, Amped 2 really surprised me especially because I've never been into extreme sports titles. Amped 2 is an addictive title that will keep you coming back to perfect your snowboarding skills.

Okay, now I bought this game out of pure interest in snowboarding. This was the first X-Box game I had, and also the most challenging. The career mode starts of fairly simple, but once you get to about rank #215, it starts getting tough. But it is mainly just getting sponsors and doing photo shoots. The events, like the competition levels in Tony Hawk, are also very tough. One of the better things about this game is that it supports custom soundtracks. If you like snowboarding games that are very, very hard, and very messed up physics, then pick this one up.