Growing up in Canada, there’s no shortage of snow. And with all that snow comes lots of wintery activities such as skiing, snowboarding, sledding or even just having a snowball fight.
However, if you’re like me then you’d probably rather be inside playing one of the many snowboarding games from the early to mid-2000s like the SSX series or Amped.
While in the past few years, there has been a slow wave of skateboarding games, we’re now starting to see some snowboarding titles from smaller studios, especially for the current-gen consoles like FoamPunch’s Shredders.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Shredders is fairly straightforward but slightly different from other snowboarding titles. To move your character, move the left thumbstick and moving the right thumbstick controls the board to help you stop.
But to do any tricks, you’ll hold RT to prepare for a jump and release it to do it. Pressing LT in the air will prepare your character’s landing. To do any type of spin, you would turn with the right thumbstick.
Holding the RB or LB buttons will make your character do a Grab. If this seems slightly complex, don’t worry, the game will teach you all the controls to get you better acquainted. If you do wipe out in the game, pressing X to Reshred will respawn your character from just before you crashed. Meanwhile pressing or holding B will restart your run.
While it’s great to have easy access to buttons to respawn your character, I wish the respawn would be where your crash point was instead of just before it happened.
The game does have a bit of a story mode that has you doing different challenges, which takes you to different snowboard hills like backcountry areas or more park-focused with ramps, rails and more. There are around 40 or so core missions to the game’s main story mode.
And there are a few cutscenes (which are skippable). One thing that irritated me was the dialogue of your character, a lot of the time, they would just repeat some of the same lines as your travelling down the mountain.
In addition to shredding down the mountain on your own, the game does feature a multiplayer mode for your to play with your friends online.
Presentation
From a visual standpoint, Shredders looks great, especially when playing on Xbox Series X. The game is running at a buttery smooth 4K 60fps. All the mountain environments look fairly realistic.
Final Thoughts
Overall, Shredders is a good snowboarding game that is fun and looks good visually.
Shredders will be available for Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC and Xbox Game Pass at launch.
An Xbox Series X review code of the game was provided ahead of launch by FoamPunch.
Pros
- Looks great visually
- Good variety of locations to snowboard
- Multiplayer is a great bonus to play with friends
Cons
- Annoying & repetitive character dialogue
TheCanadianTechie 