Supreme Snowboarding (Boarder Zone) Review

Snowboarding the powerful sound of it. True, I never had the chance to stand on a snowboard (I am rather proud to have learned how to ski), but perhaps the three snowboarding titles I have played count in a way. If nothing else, they gave me some sporty ideas about how to spend the next winter.

Housemarque from Finland (If any of you can remember, they had published an arcade game called 'The Reap', some two years ago. It wasn't highly praised, still I will remember it because it had fantastic graphics and ultra swift action, even on the slowest of machines) developed Supreme Snowboard, and it was published by Infogrames. If ESPN X-Games Pro Boarder started a spark, Snow Wave Avalanche added some more fuel, Supreme Snowboarding made the flames lick higher. To be quite clear: all three games are similar, and everything that appears in one appears in the other two in a slightly changed form.

Groove...
First things first, one just could not do without three key factors: insanely steep slopes, constantly flowing adrenalin and fast music doing its best to add to the atmosphere and keep up the rhythm. Next come the all too familiar disciplines: race, time race, half-pipe and big-air (or big-jump, which ever you prefer). Then comes the selection of your character (three men and three girls have been made available; note "Firestarter" Keith) and finally the selection of the board. Always think carefully before selecting the board because its features (speed, turning, flexibility) can give you serious advantages on certain tracks. There are altogether nine tracks in three different environments:

• Alpine: pure rock'n'snow, caverns and abysses. My favorite.
• Forest: A chase through the woods and narrow canyons.
• Village: Chase through and about a mountain village and ski-center.

In the beginning you can only access the first two tracks of each environment (easy and middle one), later however, after successfully won championship ride (or possibly, successfully typed in cheat codes) you can access the hardest three tracks.

Playability
The best thing about Supreme Snowboarding is its playability. I guess that the ease of gameplay was the very thing that has attracted me to this game. You don't have to remember hundreds of commands like in X-Games Pro Boarder or perform an elaborate ritual just to make your character jump. Apart from the cursor keys you only have two more commands. The riders simply glide down the mountain, bridges, frozen roads, but they do tend to simply stand still if they come across a surface with no snow, even though they were moving at about 100 km/h afore that. Not too realistic, but I guess you'll just have to take that the way it is. Even besides this defect the feeling of the ride is fantastic. And this also goes for different behaviors of the snowboard on different surfaces: easy ride on the smooth snow, somewhat harder controls in deep snow and wild sliding on ice. I simply loved the feel of hitting an ice surface and gliding on it.

The graphics
There is no doubt that Supreme Snowboarding has the best graphics of all three games... The levels are neatly done, the models are relatively polygonal-abundant, and some effects look really fantastic. The snow trails look very realistic and are much different in deep or shallow snow. Still it seems that Housemarque devoted most of their attention to the excellent dynamic lighting. A night ride down a track lit by flares and fire looks most impressive. The volumetric shadows are the best I have seen for quite some time. Of course, that inflicts the frame-rate, as the game is rather demanding for what it has to offer. Even though two out of three standard APIs are supported (Direct3D, Glide and Software; not featuring OpenGL), it somehow seems that the engine has not been properly tweaked. Let us just say that Snowwave Avalanche did not have too bad graphics, but it still had a far better frame rate on machines twice as slow. Besides the common third person views, there is also a 1st person view which can prove to be very interesting, especially with the volumetric shadows. Just imagine what it is like to dive towards the earth catching glimpse of your realistic shadow on the snow getting closer.

...and the music, of course
And the last but not the least: the music and sound effects. What could one listen to while sliding down a mountain? We all know what to expect... a lot of lively and fast punk-like music, some faster music and above all, some even faster music. Housemarque has put 8 songs befitting description on the CD. In fact, half of the songs are guitar music with a lot of riffs, while the rest is techno and techno-guitar music. It is basically a good musical background to the game (except for the second part ;) and it is a pity it has not even been signed. I did not manage to find anything about the performers even after searching through the official site. The rest of audio samples vary from the excellent sounds of moving on snow or ice (particularly effective when played from the 1st person perspective) to utterly dull sentences... khhhm, sorry, one and only one utterly dull sentence with which you are being announced on some 'big-air' exhibition. Who would think that it is that difficult to record two or even three vocal announcements?

Still, with all its flaws, Supreme Snowboarding is currently in the leading position of this insufficiently represented genre.