Stoked on virtual snowboarding
Imagine a snowboard, a chauffeur-driven helicopter and a mountain blanketed in fluffy, white goodness. Heaven, right? But what with the credit crunch and the impending doom that is global warming, fulfilling such a dream doesn’t seem very likely. It’s lucky then, that whenever the weather or your wallet isn’t playing ball, you can always retreat into the comfort of your own living room and realise your powder dreams through a video game.
Snowboarding games have been doing the rounds on consoles since the days of 16bits and Sonic the Hedgehog. Legendary games like Cool Boarders, 1080 Snowboarding and the awesome Amped series have allowed global joystick bashers to nail that perfect switch-corked-900-to-crooked-nosepress-to-triple-backflip time and time again. Impressive stuff, but try that in real life and the closest you’ll get is spine-snap-faceplant-to-hospital-ward. Finally, though, there is hope. That hope is Stoked, a brand-new snowboarding game for Xbox 360 that promises to do to the genre what Skate did for skateboarding.
“No paths. No boundaries. No limits,” raves Ced Funches of Destineer Studios, the developers of Stoked. “The goal is to fully explore the backcountry and complete challenges to earn sponsorships. Once sponsored, players can unlock gear, complete pro challenges and become a phenomenon in the snowboarding world.” No easy task, it seems. Many have tried before and fallen flat. So in order to recreate that authentic backcountry experience, Destineer teamed up with none other than master snowboard movie producers Absinthe Films.
“I always thought a video game would be a great complement to the work we do with films,” says Patrick ‘Brusti’ Armbruster, co-founder of Absinthe Films. “In Stoked, you can get dropped wherever you want by helicopter and just ride. That freedom is what we try to represent in our movies; riding in the backcountry and planning your own lines. This game really allows you to do that.”
This was no simple rubber stamp endorsement from Absinthe. Brusti’s role in Stoked’s creation started with a little friendly advice but soon expanded, seeing him getting no less than thirty snowboarding brands involved including Burton, Billabong, Volcom, Oakley and Quiksilver. As well as this, a whole host of Absinthe riders including Travis Rice, Nicolas Müller, Wolle Nyvelt, Annie Boulanger and Gigi Rüf are set to appear in the game. It was something that Destineer were, well, stoked about.
“I was a huge fan of their film Optimistic? and was really fired up to get the chance to work with them,” says Ced. “The Absinthe approach is shared within the game and really influenced by their crew of riders with everything from the camera angles to the gear they ride.” And so Brusti, alongside Nyvelt, headed out to Destineer Studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to help give this ambitious project a healthy dose of authenticity. It was there that they advised on the biomechanics of the avatar riders and demonstrated tricks and grabs in motion capture studios. “We also supplied them with a bunch of footage, and helped get the look and the riding positions right and, most importantly, made everything look stylish,” says Brusti.
So what can you expect from this shredding simulation? First of all, no less than five real-world mountains including the free-riding Meccas of Alaska, Patagonia and Les Diablerets in Switzerland with more than forty-five square-miles of open terrain to explore on each peak. But according to Funches, these aren’t just lifeless scale models – they are living, breathing mountains. “Every day the snow and weather conditions change thanks to a dynamic weather and time of day system. Snow settles on mountain surfaces, changing the riding experience, opening new paths and building new trickable features and challenges. It could be clear with blue skies when you start but a nasty little storm could roll on through. This changes the way you play, and because the snow accumulates, it dramatically changes the way the game looks.”
But looks aside, the all important aspect is the ride. It appears that Stoked has learnt a thing or two from the analogue controls that made last year’s Skate such an addictive title. Ced explains: “Players will use the analogue sticks to control their riders and pull off moves; left analogue stick steers the rider while the right analogue stick controls the action. By pulling down on the right stick as you ride you begin to crouch and generate pop, pushing up initiates an ollie. The rest is up to the rider. The triggers are the corresponding grabs: right trigger is the right hand, left trigger is the left hand. From there, players are free to try any combination of spins, tricks and grabs, with no button mashing.”
And as you progress, destroying challenges and racking up competition wins, you unlock tons of sponsored boards, boots, bindings, jackets and accessories. And, of course, with pro riding comes some virtual media interest. “Stoked truly gives an organic feel to being on the mountain and pulling off the move you want to do, when you want to do it,” says Ced. “Say you found a killer spot for a photo op. Once you’ve mastered a trick you can pull that trick off on anything, anywhere in the game.”
But while previous gaming titles have also embraced the perils of the backcountry – challenging gnarly virtual riders to shred lethal tides of avalanches – their absence in Stoked is a philosophical choice, not a technical one. Says Ced: “Real backcountry riders don’t promote to kids that riding an avalanche is cool. It’s dangerous and a little taboo.” In fact, it was the opinion of many Stoked collaborators, including Brusti, Travis Rice and Nicolas Müller, that such a mortal hazard should not be celebrated.
Such is Stoked’s commitment to realism, even Brusti - a man with access to a snowboard, helicopter and the kind of big mountain terrain us mere mortals can only dream of - can’t wait for its arrival: “I’m going to pimp up my apartment back in Switzerland with a flatscreen TV, home cinema and massive sofa, so when the winter starts drawing in, I will be spending a lot more time indoors.”
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