14 DAY TRIAL // As part of the Ubidays event in Paris, Ubisoft has unveiled its snowboarding title, called Shaun White Snowboarding, which is set to reach gamers sometime in the holiday season with development ongoing for the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, the Nintendo Wii and for a PC version of the game.
The Assassin's Creed game engine will be used for the next gen console and for the PC version, with the Wii getting a different engine, designed especially for the Nintendo console. Ubisoft says that the game will not be arcade like and over the top as other snowboarding ones, but more accurate since it is based on actual real world physics. The courses will offer challenges ranging from jumps to slalom and the player will learn to use the weight of the snowboarder to steer around the course.
As you do successive tricks, each one more difficult than the previous, you get a combo multiplier that will give you more points the longer you keep it going. If the snowboarder you control crashes, your combo will be reset and you have to start from the beginning. The game will keep track of player statistics, such as biggest combo or longest session without bailing, and you can even compare them online to those of your friends.
Different game modes will be available. Chasm jumping involves jumping over big crevasses; death race involves trying to get your opponents off the track while going down the mountain while another mode focuses on performing gravitation defying tricks.
The Wii version of Shaun White Snowboarding will be integrated with the Balance Board, creating a more realistic experience than the other versions of the game. It might be so interesting that the other platforms for which the game has been launched could suffer from the fact that they do not have a peripheral as capable as the Balance Board.