Reviews

Crazy Snowboard Review- Snow Blindness

Everyone remembers 1080 Snowboarding and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, timeless classics from the 64 bit era that showed us how board games could work. Sadly, for their attempts at imitation, it doesn’t carry over for Crazy Snowboard developed by Ezone. Find out why in our review here at DroidGamers.

Title: Crazy Snowboard | Developer: Ezone.comGenre: Sports | Players: 1 | Version: 1.0.3 | Size: 20.21MB | Price: Cheap as free

What Crazy Snowboard is, however, is a decent attempt at trying to merge what made Tony Hawk and 1080 great; mission-based gameplay with a free roam option for people who just want to muck about. Throwing in a high score incentive means that the replay value is high, as a higher score means more in-game cash to buy boards, avatars and more.

As a concept, this is sound: however, in execution it leaves a few things lacking that I couldn’t really put aside for the love of the game. I mean, Crazy Snowboard is not a horrible game by any means; however, I wouldn’t pay money for it, and I sure as hell won’t be keeping it on my phone after I finish this review.

Controls and Gameplay:

This is where I had most of the problems with my review. I find that any company who wants to implement the “hold it like a steering wheel” style of control needs to do a number of things well in order for it to be successful:

  1. It needs to be sharp: I cannot tell you how many times I have under or over-compensated in order to make a turn in this game. I am constantly in a state of questioning the sensitivity, and I cannot get used to how the tilt works.
  2. Gameplay mechanics need to suit it: finally lining up the jump you had in mind perfectly, only to find that you can somehow steer in the air was a big kick in the nuts. Many an objective has been lost because I happened to not have my phone level.
  3. Give us an ability to slow down or stop: endlessly accelerating with no way to corner sharply just makes things frustrating.

The touch controls for jumping/tricks are surprisingly responsive; they’re one of the few examples I found that I didn’t want to throw my phone across the room. My only complaint is that you need to press one button to jump, and then after a delay the trick/rotation buttons come up. Sometimes the delay is way too long, and makes for a frustrating time. Also, holding the jump button makes you crouch in preparation for the jump, but you don’t go faster as a result of tucking in: did they learn nothing from other snowboard games?

The mission system was a good idea; the objectives are much like Tony Hawk mainstays like “board between the markers”, “collect the letters” or “beat the score.” The system is good, but the controls in which you need to achieve them are flawed. However, the game mercifully will replace further objectives with the ones you may have missed: missing the “O” in “board” does not mean you need to restart the level.

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Presentation and Sound:

Little complaints here. I find that sometimes graphics look good or bad despite what phone they run on, and on my Milestone they definitely held up to par with many other 3D games that I’ve installed. The character models are a bit simplistic, but the board designs are great. The tracks (at least the ones I played) are very much a single slope with jumps and rails; nothing really special, and not much in the way of atmosphere. Didn’t see any trees besides the basic course outline, and though I hate to say it, the iOS version looks much better.

The sound is really just a generic rock soundtrack along with some voices that get the job done. I can’t say I hated it specifically, but it didn’t exactly wow me, either. Then again, which Android games are praised for their sound direction these days?

Verdict:

As much as I hate to say it, there are some games better left unmade: with a lot of these 3D games (including the popular Raging Thunder) I just cannot see the appeal. The controls are twitchy and the gameplay just leaves you feeling like you’re lowering your standards just to say that “Hey, I’m playing a 3D racing game on your phone.”

In the end, it could be be that I’m using an older phone (overclocked 1ghz Motorola Milestone), but trying this game out on my roommate’s Nexus One yielded no better results. I’m more in favour of games that lack imperative touch controls, like sim games or puzzles; they seem snappier, and less of a chore to play.

Rating: I don’t give out number ratings

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