1080° Avalanche

Written by Matt Swider  on January 08, 2004

Review: Buried under a pile of snow or bound for greatness, it all depends on your attitude towards downhill racing.

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Besides the sense of slowdown that occurs when off-balance and the wall of snow that comes with each avalanche, there are other visual effects that successfully portray Avalanche as a fast-paced snowboarding game. For instance, the streaking lines that run across the screen when you tuck really tell a lot about the speed you're traveling at. However, because Avalanche enables and encourages such high speeds, it's not wise to do much more than tucking. There's little reason to attempt any tricks during one of the match races and more regret if you bail in the process.

Even though performing tricks in the main mode is futile, Avalanche does take advantage of its trick system in the trick attack mode that consists of three distinct stunt courses. As with any snowboarding game, there's a half-pipe, which returns to 1080° with greater length, and alongside of that is the Airmake. This giant jump is another remake and, while it wasn't the most notable feature within the original game, it's nice to see that the developer still included it so that players can combine moves in one brief moment during one big fall. However, the practice course and the trick list objectives that went along with that course weren't included. Instead, a terrain park, which is said to be loosely based on the world-famous Nintendo GameCube Parks and Pipes at Whistler Blackcomb, offers an excellent combination of half-pipes, ramps, and railways.

The two other supporting modes, time trial and gate challenge, give players a chance to check out their favorite slopes from the main mode again as well as earn new boards at the same time. But time trial isn't all about making it down the slopes in record time. Instead, it focuses on five pieces of a gold coin scattered throughout each course and collecting them all in one run eventually opens up a set of new snowboards. The gate challenge is much more predictable in that players pass through designated gates as you might suspect and earn some of the more novelty boards in the end.

Moving throughout the menus of 1080°: Avalanche is very simple and similar to its predecessor. Everything centers on a ski lodge again where the selectable boarders hang out and utter bits of dialogue that make the voice actors sound as if they were trained by Keanu Reeves. However, the rest of the audio is well done with notable songs like УFine AgainФ from Seether. Cauterize and Finger Eleven are also among the music contributors that Nintendo enlisted for this game after both groups played for the recent Nintendo Fusion Tour last fall. Since selecting music is as easy as moving through the rest of game menus and because the songs included are appropriate this time, Avalanche is much more in tune with the snowboarding scene unlike 1080° Snowboarding and its under heard of and awful tunes.