Shaun White Snowboarding: World Stage
Wii only, Wii Balance Board or Wii Motion Plus required
by Ubisoft
40 euros (no bundled options available, well, not in France anyway)

Caveat lector: I am writing this from the point of view of someone who plays with a Wii Balance Board. It is equally possible to play with just a Wii Remote and Wii Motion Plus, but I don't play it like that, because I won't get any significant amount of exercise that way.

So, this is a snowboarding game, just like Wii Fit has a snowboarding game, right? Well, yes, and, well, no.

The fundamental control mechanism is the same as in the Wii Fit snowboarding game, with the Wii Balance Board turned sideways and so on. However, this being Shaun White Snowboarding, we are not content to just race down the hill dodging oncoming banners. Instead, we do all manner of aerial tricks with the snowboard by moving our weight around on the Wii Balance Board and pressing various combinations of the A and B buttons on the Wii Remote. And we do it in various exotic and in some cases improbable locations in eight countries around the world. Some are realistic (in the narrow sense that they take place up in snow-covered mountains), while some are not. For example, one of the runs is set in Paris, with an improbably tall vertical drop that ends by the Eiffel Tower, which is in one of the flatter parts of the city, and certainly doesn't have a five-hundred-foot tall hill nearby.

But enough of that, how does it work? The board is used for steering when you are on the ground. Shift your weight just like on the Wii Fit snowboard game to steer, accelerate, brake and, unlike on Wii Fit, jump. Once in the air, you shift your weight and push the A and/or B buttons to do all manner of spins and rolls. These tricks frequently have exotic names, and vary in difficulty. The more difficult a trick is, the higher you score, but the greater the risk of a crash when you land.

The game has several modes of play. There is a career mode, in which you play against AI-controlled players in a championship series. There is a Freeride mode, which is just the normal practice mode, where you can practice tricks and techniques on any unlocked runs. (How do you unlock runs? A handful are unlocked at the beginning, and you unlock more as you compete in the championship.)

Types of run:
* Straightforward speed runs, usually with limited opportunities to show off jumping abilities. In the Freeride mode, that is all they are, but in the championship mode, you compete against three others, controlled either by the game or (in the multiplayer mode) by other human players.
* Trick-riding runs, with various places to jump, rails to ride, half-pipes, and so on. The object here is to score lots of points by doing as many tricks as you can, preferably the more difficult ones.

There are thirteen different characters in the game each with different strengths, weaknesses, and bonus abilities. You can (and probably should) play all of them of the course of your progression through the career mode of the game or when playing in Freeride mode. Before each run, the game offers you a choice of rider (actually on the board) and friend (on the sidelines, cheering the rider on). The suggested choices are selected according to the skills of the rider and the bonus offered by the friend, when matched against the course. Some friends offer increased speed, jumping ability, and so on, while others offer "offensive" or "attack" abilities better suited to the various racing runs.

All in all, I enjoy this game, and find that it gives a better workout than the Wii Fit snowboard game (hardly surprising since the runs are longer and require more elaborate and vigorous movement), and I would award it a MET value of 3, as compared to the Wii Fit Snowboard Slalom's 2.

8.5/10 (it is good, but I prefer Red Steel 2)

I have seen a snowboard accessory for this game (or is it a skateboard?), have you tried that?

I think it is a skateboard, but I'm not sure because I don't have one and therefore have not tried it.

Why so glum? Maybe you should go have a nice game of snowboarding and cheer up a bit.

That's the plan for the weekend some time, maybe Saturday when everything is shut for the French equivalent of Labor Day.