Shredders - Review
When I first saw Shredders, I was Amped, here was a game ready to conquer the Steep and Dark Summit of snowboarding games. The game may have done a few 1080s but it has finally landed, is this a great game for those Snowboard Kids, making them Cool Boarders, if you will. Or is this more of a Road Trip that leaves you in a Blur that has you feeling SSX Tricky.
Ok, you might have guessed by all the forced puns in my opening statement, I am a big fan of snowboarding games. When it comes to sports games, they are not my thing, I will play them and enjoy them, but I don’t crave them, but for some reason the snowboarding genre has always appealed to me. With that in mind, I booted into Shredded and couldn’t wait to discover the world that the developers at Foam Punch had carved and that required me to play the story. I do use the term story loosely, there are some connected themes that run through it, but it isn’t like you are off to save the world. You are an unnamed boarder and your mate Scotty, who is an Aussie, are just making videos for your YouTube channel, weirdly named Shreddageddon, when someone with a brand spots you and offers you some swag to do some stunts around their banners. From there, you keep getting pulled from one scenario to the next, each time meeting actual real world snowboarding icons, while exploring the mountain and its many jumps, rails and beyond.
The devs clearly didn’t put a lot of care into the ‘story’, because there are some pretty cheesy moments, like someone saying mashed potato with butter is great, while someone else is explaining about the really thick and slushy snow. It never takes itself to seriously, which is a very good thing, but still gives you a reason to want to push forward, because each time you go into a new event, you will likely meet someone new and have a chuckle at Scotty and his antics. That being said, there is an issue with the boarders that you meet and that is down to the fact that they are real people and not actors, so the quality of the lines varies wildly. There are also issues with the quality of some of the lines, which can make them hard to hear, especially when you are halfway through a trick run and focused on what you are doing, rather than what someone is saying.
Thankfully the boarding itself makes up for the goofy story, the actual controls are more complicated than other snowboarding games, think more Skate than Tony Hawk. In order to jump you pull the right trigger down, with it held thought you can’t make sharp turns, so you have to be sure you are ready to make a jump first. Much like SSX and other games, you can pre-wind your jump, letting you get some more spins in, but unlike those games, you have to flick the right stick the other way, just as you jump, in order to do it, fail that you basically stall in the air. While you are on the ground though, you can use the right stick to carve sharply to the left or right, which lets you bleed of speed in a fast way, while the left stick is for your standard movements. That is really all you need for the controls, you can at times call in a snowmobile to help you get back up a mountain, or just to get some speed and in some locations, there are ziplines, that you can grab onto for some location-based boosting, but that is really it. Tricks are done by either using the right stick to spin, the left stick to flip or holding the left or right bumper depending on which hand you want to use, that also requires a direction of the right stick to be engaged, in order to pull off a specific trick.
Sadly though, the game had a lot of issues telling when I was doing tricks or not, not that I failed to land them, but that I either did them and it wouldn’t register, or even weirder, I didn’t do anything resembling a trick and it thought I had. There were times when I would launch of the top of a riser and attempt to get a good jump and then trick, only for the game to not register my inputs, leaving me to basically stall out. The worst part though, was when it would register a trick, when I clearly failed to do it, like a backflip, the game would still register it as successful, now that might sound like a good thing, but when you are trying to do trick runs, it hurts more than you might think. The same can be said for how often the game would not register a trick, which I did and then landed, without crashing, leaving me to wonder what the point of preparing for landing was. That is actually important, pulling the left trigger while in the air, rights your boarder, letting them land on the ground, without face planting and if you don’t do it, or leave it to late, you can wipe out in a big way.
While the issues with the game not understanding tricks or thinking I was doing them, when I wasn’t, are annoying they don’t detract from the pure fun that carving down the slopes provides. The game has a flow meter in the corner and the more you are sticking to a path, pulling off tricks and generally just getting in the zone, the more that fills up and having it full is pretty satisfying. The game does also let you deck your boarder out in licenced apparel, some of which look pretty cool and as you complete the challenges laid out by the pros, you earn the gear. After the first few unlocks, I really didn’t worry about any other gear that I unlocked, mostly because it was never something that appealed to me, but thankfully the amount is not insane, so those who do want to invest in their look, won’t have to worry about scouring the digital shelf for the perfect item.
Speaking of looks, let us talk about the games presentation, which is a little mixed, with some good and some huh, first the good. The game has a simple look, you and your board and then the mountain, with trees, jumps and the odd building around. There are no insane locations like SSX, nothing totally out of proportion like Cool Boarders, just some pure and simple places to shred, which is very welcome. Your character and that of Scotty, Lisa and the rest of the folks you meet, do have a weird look, they have no faces, well they do, but you never see them. There is even a line early on, where a character calls out the fact that someone is wearing a face cover, which they apparently don’t normally do and the response is yeah, the game makers didn’t have the budget to animate faces. I appreciate the humour and a justification for the look, but they really didn’t need to do it, still they could have done the old superhero trick, of never seeing the face, but people could have been putting googles on, while looking away from camera, heck Wilson from Home Improvement is another way to show character, without showing it all.
The huh of the looks comes in the games vibe, there are times, especially in the loading screens where there is a lot of funky designs, pixelated text, calligraphy font, it is all over the place, but then in the game, there is barely hud or other on-screen accoutrement. In fact, while you are shredding, you get a score counter, the previously mentioned flow meter and that is it, unless you are doing a trick. Icons on the map that indicate where events and challenges are, are defined by giant floating hands, but they don’t match anything else that you see on the screen, not even the hud. Another thing that is weird, is the games people, every single human character looks like they are Gumby in snow gear. Their proportions are not quite right, they move in exaggerated ways and they always seem to be stuck in place during cutscenes, it is really weird, now it doesn’t hurt the game, just an odd choice, given the rest of the visuals.
Sadly, even with the lack of things on screen hud wise, or the less than populated world, the game does have some technical issues, which do mar the experience. Most of these will pop up when you have to reset a run or refresh one, with the load screen stuttering, but I also saw other characters acting as if they were on a 2 second loop, the kind you see when people are lagging in online games. Randomly for a while, the game would present me the start screen for a challenge, but upon my acceptance of it, it would remove then load into the game world and then return, requiring my acceptance again. There is also a significant amount of pop in around you, nothing major like trees to get in the way, but the textures for the world are constantly loading in, so you can find yourself powering along, only to see the jump you are about to hit, change how it looks. The last issue has to do with the hud, I do like the minimalist design, but the bright yellow text needs to go, there were times when the sun would be in the top right corner of the screen, which is where the score lives, making it hard to see the score. I did check the settings for any colour options on it, borders or shadows and there was nothing, so an update to either make that darker or customisable would be great.
On the sound side of things, there are some very weak moments and some incredibly strong ones, let’s get the weakest out of the way, the voice acting. The main characters like Scotty and Lisa are ok, they provide your connection to the world and even though some of the lines are pure cheese, they are delivered with enough passion for snowboarding to overcome that. The problem, as I mentioned above is the pro boarders brought into the game, some of the lines feel like they were cut together from speeches, given how robotic they sound and others, the quality sounds like it was recorded on a phone, whilst careening down the side of a mountain. The strong aspect comes in the form of the music and lack thereof, unlike other sports titles, there are no licenced tracks here, so no Run DMC for you, but the music included has a light dance beat, that just feels good to listen to, while you attempt to nail that 900 Indy. Even better though, the game will cut the music from time to time, more so when you are just boarding, so you can enjoy the sounds of your shredding the snow and the wind rushing by, it just sounds amazing.
Shredders is a difficult game to recommend, on one hand it has some incredible fun locations to board around and makes the act of getting around very easy. But the other side is that the trick system is very hit and miss on when it lets you do the trick and if you do, registering it. If you don’t care about tricks so much, you just want to shred, then the game will provide you with a great canvas do so. Fans of snowboarding games will enjoy the simple nature of the experience, so grab your gear and hit the slopes.
The Score
7.5
Review code provided by Foampunch
The Pros
+Simple control mechanics, that offer more precision in how you board
+The mountain contains a lot of fun places to explore
The Cons
-The trick system is good, when it works and it is that second part that is the problem
-The game has some technical issues that do mar the experience, but they thankfully don’t break it
