Customer Reviews

Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Take the downhill courses from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, replace the skateboards with snowboards, and you've got yourself a damn fine snowboarding game, right? Wrong. Although Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder borrows heavily from Tony, it's not nearly as good. Not by a long shot. Maybe it's the way your character occasionally lands tricks that look impossible while falling inexplicably at other times. Maybe it's the way he tries to go uphill when you don't want him to. Maybe it's the developers strange fascination with grinds, which seldom occur in real snowboarding but have to be performed adnauseum to advance in the game. Or maybe it's the game's obscene difficulty level Greg and i had to tag team the game for hours to reach the third level. Shaun Palmers does have a few things going for it. The control scheme , level objectives and stat building process have been lifted straight from Tony Hawk Pro Skater, meaning fans of the series will instantly feel at home. You're also free to choose your own path down each run, instead of being restricted to a narrowly defined course, as you are in many snowboarding games. Shaun Palmer's also has a truckload of cleverly hidden secret items, sure to keep you busy for hours. Still, there are way too many better snowboarding games available for Playstation 2, most notably SSX tricky or Cool Boarders 2001, for me to want to spend too much time with this one.

I bought this game thinking that it would be a fun snowboarding game, but after a few hours, I think I should send it back. First the controls are pretty lame - they are merely button presses - you never feel like you have any sense of the snowboarder's true spins or rotations. The tricks only occur when you push the right combo buttons. So it feels robotic and not intuitive. Secondly, the graphics are only worthy of a 1st generation PS2 title - they are pretty bad. The textures are muddled - the riders look pasted on, and there is no real sense of a crisp environment. Last, there is no real sense of flow to the game. I find myself trying to get a good line of tricks together and not being able to pull it off. I tried for a while, but I think the level design isn't too hot. Maybe its because they are trying to implement the feel of a skate game (Hawk) to a Snowboard game, when the two are distinctly different.

Sound is mediocre - the boarder had an annoying scraping sound that reminded me more of a skate game or riding on really icy terrain. It didn't sound right. I'm sure there are some big heavy metal music fans out there - and if this is your style then you will love this game. I chose to play with the music off - it just gets distracting.

The other cheezy part is the whole "extreme"ness of the game. The graphic style and the gothic lettering is more unreadable than it is "cool". The whole thing just feels like Activision is trying to cash in on the success of the Hawk game. What made the Hawk game so good was the game, not any of the "extreme" stuff that came with it.

If you're into snowboarding sim games - I would try the Winter X Games titles from Konami. Last year's game was good and this year's game is also right on - the controls are tight. If you like really arcade style games- try SSX Tricky. But Palmer should be a rental only. Even Cool Boarders 2001 is better than this - and that says a lot.

I rented this game, and naturally, I did not get a full set of instructions. That is the only excuse for why this game was nearly impossible. Sure, I could take the one run, go all over the mountain, do some inexplicably impossible stunts, and find cool things, but there was no physical way I could find to advance to the next mountain. When I had certain boarders, nearly any combination of buttons and/or stick moves would invariably result in exactly the same stunt. Only using Palmer himself seemed to change that aspect. I can only say thankfully it only cost me one rental.

After having read through many of the reviews on here, I find that I disagree with most of them. I think this game kicks .... People should look at it as a seperate thing than Tony Hawk, even if it is similar. It takes a little time to learn the various tricks, but once you do, it isn't hard to land them. You can't even compare this to the way snowboarding is in real life, because this is just a video game! You can also make your own snowboarder, which I think it pretty cool. It's a very fun game, and I personally think it's one of the best games I've played in a long time!

Put tony hawk pro skater 3 and ssx tricky in a blender and you get, two broken games. Buy this game and you get, one broken game. I would like to tell all of you now that this is NOT tony hawk's pro skater on a snowboard. First of all, the graphics are about 1/9 as good as Tony Hawk's pro skater, which is pretty bad for a PS2 game. Secondly, the trick system is so terrible that neversoft should be ashamed. I played the demo of this game that came with THPS3, and turned it off after the first 2 minutes. I never played it again. Please, buy SSX tricky instead.
I would also like to say that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is a great game.

This game simply rocks in every aspect!!! The gameplay graphic, the Music... Everything!!! BUY IT NOW!!

At first i thought this is just another bite off from Tony Hawk, but i found out that it is alot more better than any snowbording games around. Especially the excellent music in the game play and the game ply graphic!!! No need for consideration, this game ROCKS!!!

I LOVE this game. It only took me an hour of straight playing to really get the feel of the game and start hitting tricks. It is challenging but the first course is great and large so you have many options for stunts to rack up point. My only complaint is there are not enought GIRL characters to chose from!

I have played the demo to this game on Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 and it looks too easy. In real life it if impossible to do a backflip off the ground just by jumping, but it's possible in this game. The graphics look good just the gameplay needs worked on.

This game is superior to the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater in many ways:

1.Way better soundtrack. Tony Hawk didn't even have any good bands on his first game, then on his 2nd he had 3 good bands and 3 good songs, Papa Roach's "Blood Brothers", Rage Aganist the Machine's "Guerilla Radio" and Powerman 5000's "When World's Collide. Then, on his 3rd game, he had 1 good band, Alien Ant Farm, but picked their bad song, "Wish". Meanwhile, Shaun Palmer has Alien Ant Farm's "Courage" (Their best song), Powerman 5000's "Bombshell", Spineshank's "New Disease" (Which inspired me to but their CD), Papa Roach's "Dead Cell" (Their best song), and Static-X's "This is Not". Point to Shaun.

2.Easy to play. You can almost pull off a 900 just by clicking a button. And you can EASILY create a boarder.

3.He doidn't get greedy and put out 3 games!!

4.You can bonk. Bonk. Bonk. Say "bonk" with me.

5.People have really good A.I.

6.A lot more reasons I don't want to list because I'm tired of typing so now I say goodbye.