Shaun White: Road Trip (Wii Review)

Your Virtual Lift Ticket Awaits

Since I first laid eyes on the Balance Board, I pondered the prospective games that could come down the pipeline. The first balance game that came to my mind was snowboarding, and luckily developers agreed. Although Wii Fit debuted with a snowboarding mini-game back in May, it was limited and only increased my hunger for a full-fledged title. Fortunately, Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip has come to the rescue, thanks to the fine folks at Ubisoft Montreal.

The main idea of the game is to snowboard through different countries in an attempt to meet up with the nomadic Shaun White. Wait a minute. Why does this sound so familiar? Traveling the globe… snowboarding…Shaun White? Maybe it’s because the whole premise of the game is the same as an old American Express commercial, starring Shaun White!



Alright, so it might be a little different. After all, you are trying to catch up to Shaun White in the game, not travel with him. And as the premise for a video game, it is pretty weak. Personally, if White invited me to Europe to go snowboarding, and when I got there found out he was in Japan, I’d probably be pretty ticked and want to go home, not keep following him around. But moving on…

Instead of giving us a port of the HD version given to the PS3 and Xbox 360, Ubisoft decided to build the game from the ground up. The main differences in the Wii version of the game are of course the graphics style and the controls. The game’s characters have a bland, cartoony, anime-like look, many unintentionally resembling The Muppets. While I feel like the character design is sloppy and unappealing, some might find it charming.

Some of your multicultural acquaintances.

In contrast however, the environments are well designed and some of the mountains are surprisingly gorgeous, especially for a Wii game. Some of my personal favorite courses are in Japan, which features an indoor snow-filled arena, and nighttime snowboarding.

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As far as the controls go, you can use either the Wii Remote in the standard remote holding positon or the Wii Remote with the Balance Board. Each option uses the Wii Remote to execute all of your tricks by pressing the A or B buttons. The Wii Remote by itself just doesn’t offer a lot to the experience.

I’m not exactly sure why they didn’t use the nunchuk as it adds more buttons to diversify the tricks as well as a control stick. Your hand can easily get tired twisting back and forth all the way down a mountain. Steering, added with jumping and tricks, turns into a whole waggle fest. I think having these controls is great if you’re going for casual audience (a Wii tradition), but more options would have been appreciated. SSX Blur seemed to have a perfect blend between motion controls and button usage.

The Balance Board is much more fun and is really what makes this game worth playing. If you don’t have one, you should scratch the game off your list. All of the controls are done by moving your weight around the board, just as you would expect. Leaning on your left leg on the front of the board makes you go faster, and a brief squat and lift makes you jump.

Every single time I played this game with the Balance Board, I ended up breaking a sweat and being sore the next day, just from a few runs down the mountain. It’s really nice to see an innovative peripheral get some use after collecting dust for all these months. The controls work perfectly and never once did they fail because of anyone’s fault but my own.

“Road Trip” offers no tutorial at all, which can be really frustrating when trying to learn how to play. The game’s instruction booklet tries to explain how to pull off Advanced and Basic tricks, but many of the tricks use the same motions and button configurations. A tutorial would have really been welcomed and that’s coming from a guy who has never used one in his life. However, I must say that completing a trick is easy to do and the game registers your movements perfectly each time, even though you might not always execute the trick that you wanted to.

The game includes a single player mode as well as multiplayer. The multiplayer mode consists of Co-Op, Versus Mode, and a Hot Seat Mode, where players face off against a ghost of the best player’s run. The multiplayer modes are solid, and really add depth to an otherwise shallow single player experience.

The single player mode starts you off in Canada (America’s hat), but eventually you’ll trek around the whole globe. Your character choices are slim pickings at first, but don’t you worry, you’ll meet new friends who join your road trip along the way. These friends are playable characters that you can switch between at anytime between events.

While gaining more friends increases your character choices, it also comes with its setbacks. Your new found friends constantly get in your way on the slopes. It doesn’t matter how fast or slow you go, they keep up with you and they’ll be sure to either knock you down off a rail or ruin your landing off a jump. This is especially bothersome in the last few locations where you have gained a good amount of boarding buddies. It could have really added a fun and realistic element to the game, having your friends accompany you on the slopes, but instead it turned into an unintentional game play mechanic that is quite frequent and exceedingly bothersome.

When selecting characters, you pick one Rider and one Cameraman. The Rider is your snowboarder and the cameraman is the person who trails behind, filming your every move, which is essentially the viewpoint of the player. What is neat about the cameraman position is that each character contains a special ability that will help your rider once your Respect Meter is activated. For example, choosing the character Gordon as your cameraman will give you a speed boost, where choosing Zaz will give you a trick boost. The Respect Meter is filled by Power, which is earned by either scoring points, skiing between objects or collecting Crown objects throughout the slopes. While there aren’t a lot of characters to choose from, this element allows you to mix and match different riders and cameramen to see what combination works best for you.

Throughout each country, you’ll take part in different Events. These events, some of which include Slopestyles, Half Pipes and Slaloms, have goals attached to them. The goal that you must complete to advance is the Dare Goal. The Respect Goals are a little bit harder and aren’t necessary to your overall objective of catching up to Shaun White. They really are just a means of advancing your skill level. Where a Half Pipe’s Dare Goal might ask you to gain 5000 points, a Respect Goal might ask you to gain 7000 points.


Some of the Events can be fun the first time around, but for the most part they are pretty repetitive. You’ll either have to pick up a designated number of trash objects throughout the slopes or earn as many points as you can by doing tricks. And, well, that is pretty much the gist of the whole game.

The repetition is my biggest problem with the game, as it creates a pretty shallow experience. At the same time, the courses are attractive and they are designed with frequent rails to grind or ramps to jump. Those looking for just a casual stroll down the slopes are going to be disappointed, but I suppose that’s more of a skier’s game.


The Game:
Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip for the Wii is a good game for those dying to get off the couch and hit the slopes, all within the comfort of their living room. The environments are great, the characters are forgettable, and while the soundtrack of licensed tracks is refreshing, they often force you to listen to two or three of the same songs over and over again. The events in the game are fun at first, but the repetition can turn you bored. Yet despite it’s lack of depth, the game does offer a solid snowboarding experience. I’d actually welcome a sequel if it brought some variety to the table. (7/10)

The Time:
Not a lot of time? No problem. The main single player mode is surprisingly short. Depending on how quickly you can beat each event, you can easily progress through the different countries and beat the game. There are also a lot of side events you can take part in, which add to the game’s replay value. (8/10)


The Verdict:
Wobble, don’t waggle. The Wii Remote is great for a lot of things, but I just don’t think it was implemented in a fun way, at all. If you are looking for a snowboarding experience that uses the Balance Board just as it was intended, then I recommend “Road Trip.” It actually is quite a workout to carve down the different mountains. But whether your goal is to burn some calories or to just have fun, “Road Trip” creates the most authentic snowboarding experience on Wii to date.