Five reasons to be Stoked

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What separates this snowboarding title from the pack?

Great sports stories start with the little guy, the underdog. Wouldn’t you rather root for the ragtag bunch of misfits than the rich kids at the camp across the lake? Well, it’s the same with competing sports games. Sure, huge companies can pay big bucks to get some red-headed guy to talk about hitting powder, but we have a soft spot for the recently announced Stoked, the other brand-new snowboarding game coming out this year. Here are five exciting reasons why you should care more about it than Shaun White’s title.

When you choose what snow-covered rocks you’re going to jump onto, you need to take the weather into account. In other games, it can just be fairly random, or else always the same on each slope. But in Stoked, each day has different weather at different times during a day-and-night cycle attached to a real world clock set to GMT. Before choosing a slope, you can see the weather planned out for the whole day. On top of that, if it's snowing, the flakes build up over time and can dynamically change the course

2. Real mountains all around

We aren’t too sure how close SW will stick to reality, but in Stoked your playgrounds are what we’re told are very authentic terrain of actual mountains. You start with five to descend, including the peaks of Mt. Fuji and some unnamed crag in Gov. Palin’s backyard. Plus, you don’t just go at them from one angle - you get the whole rock, on all sides, to traverse.

Henry Gilbert
Henry Gilbert

Henry Gilbert is a former GamesRadar+ Editor, having spent seven years at the site helping to navigate our readers through the PS3 and Xbox 360 generation. Henry is now following another passion of his besides video games, working as the producer and podcast cohost of the popular Talking Simpsons and What a Cartoon podcasts.