The Amped series has tried to distinguish itself from other snowboarding series’ in the past; yet this third installment seems to borrow from many other games and takes Amped 3 on a different direction. You’ll quickly notice that the game is more or less on the wacky side, story wise. The story tries to be original by giving you one whacked-out, out-of-place, plot-line after another.
The plot-line itself presents you as a new boarder part of a snowboarding crew. Your team enters competitions and saves up the winning sum for a trip they have planned to South America. It’s not long before the money is stolen and you are the one blamed for it; and as expected, from there the story goes on to giving you the task of finding and returning the trip money.
Although a lot of the story and dialogue is very lame, I don’t know if this was intentional or not, some single-player missions can be somewhat funny. It comes down to personal taste – if you are willing to put up with the wackiness or not. But, that said, Amped does have some cool features and gameplay elements that can make the game a fun experience; however all together, those elements are still not enough to carry the game.
Amped doesn’t take long to get used to, as it pretty much copies the gameplay features of other snowboarding/skateboarding games. The challenges and missions you are tasked with have all been seen before; collecting items, following people, getting trick points, or going down a specific path, and are all some of the things you will find yourself doing during the single-player campaign of Amped.
The gameplay is pretty simple and on the positive side, it’s easy to pick up the controller and know exactly what you’re doing in seconds. Amped does deliver some cool features, such as being able to pause the game and spawn a snow mobile you can cruise around on; then once you’re done, pause again, and spawn your board back. The cool thing about that is the fact that Amped 3 has 6 mountains to explore; all of them huge, seamless and free of loading screens. Amped did impress me with the vastness of the mountains and the onside boarders who will be snowboarding, skiing or even watching you. If you pull-off a trick in front of someone you will get bonus points.
Basically, Amped 3 uses some of the same gameplay techniques seen in other games before; unfortunately the new additions don’t really add that much weight to it. While it could be fun, don’t expect to keep yourself occupied for more than a couple of weeks with this game.
Amped 3’s control scheme resembles the Tony Hawk series controls. Now, there is definitely nothing wrong with that since Tony Hawk nails skateboarding controls. You have your left stick as the controller of your boarder’s direction. Moving it left/right or up/down will make your player perform various spins while in the air.
The X, B, Y buttons act as special grab tricks and also each perform different grind specials. And of course, the A button is your general jump button. Holding down A will give your player better air, especially if you let go right as you approach the jump point of the ramp.
