Amped 3

2K Sports presents the ultimate snow-covered mountain, where you and thousands of the world’s snowboarding fans can become legends on Xbox Live. Oh yes.

Platform:
Xbox 360
Release Date:
2 December 2005
Publisher:
2K Games
Genre:
Sports

Think back to how huge and real the mountain courses were in Amped 1+2. You just know things can only get better on Xbox 360, the ‘Everest’ of gaming consoles. Amped 3 goes all out to seize the spirit of freedom and have-a-go heroism that attracts the ’boarding crowd as depicted by most Extreme Sports TV shows. To this end the presentation is youthful as in crazy, which can mean a wee bit stupid. It’s all about having fun, but when it’s time to get serious the core game is built for the challenge.

Think of Amped 3 as your personal, snow-covered playground in which the more you succeed the more locations become available. Its seven new resorts are said to be up to three times larger than previous games. Organised sessions are your chance to earn medals, but you’re free to practice your skills whenever you choose. Everything in the game is built to welcome newcomers as well as the sno-bo pros, which primarily means the trick system – crucial to the success of this type of game – is classically simple to pick up, and then massively customisable using the modifying ‘butter’ move.

In addition to just snowboarding, Amped 3 gives you a sled to play with, and even hands you the keys to a snowmobile. There are competitions geared toward the new modes of transport, but the snowmobile is also used to head out and search for sweet patches of snow. When you find found a spot, you can build your own rails and jumps to make a terrain park suited to your needs. High-scoring performances are rewarded with gear upgrades, comedy sleds and so on, urging you to build parks for maximum training opportunities and performance. If you’re really good, your exploits will set examples for others to follow on Xbox Live as all your results make it to the online scoreboard.

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SCREENSHOTS

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REVIEWS

Built with the solo boarder in mind (no online multiplayer, and only sled-racing for two on the same console) Amped 3 misses its chance to compete with Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland in that respect. However it is smart of 2K Sports to go after newcomers with a sensible control system, and offer so many opportunities to improve. The resorts are huge, packed with events to rack up points, or spend your days acquiring crazy obstacles to build goofball parks or procure gnarly accessories.