Shaun White Snowboarding

So much potential. So much promise. Phrases like that greeted Shaun White’s arrival on the snowboarding scene at the 2002 X Games, and that’s exactly how you’ll feel after playing his Xbox 360 debut…just without the payoff. Unfortunately, Shaun White Snowboarding is only half a great game, and the other half buries you face-first in the snow.

If you’re going to take the plunge, stick with the multiplayer, which is brilliant enough to earn labels like “groundbreaking.” There are no boundaries between single-player and multiplayer — when you jump onto Live, you stay exactly where you are on the mountain, only your friends can now join you. Once you gather, there’s no pressure: 16 of you can chat while all doing your own thing, or you can send each other invites to specific events. Or just pelt one another with snowballs. The hang-out factor really is great fun.

The mountains are crazy-big (it can take almost five minutes to glide from top to bottom), super-pretty (especially Alaska!), and jammed with loads of genuinely fun events, including racking up trick points, slaloming through gates, and clocking air time. The trick system feels pretty funky, though. The learning curve is steep, and your moments of awesomeness rarely feel like more than random snatches of luck. Save all your cash to buy a better board — the high-end rides make a gigantic difference.

Sadly, most of that good buzz gets killed the second you check out Shaun’s Quest, the game’s story mode. Of course, Shaun’s gotta test you, but does he have to inflict the worst kind of gruntwork imaginable? He sends you chasing after 48 coins hidden in obscure, hard-to-reach locations on the game’s four mountains. Gathering them all is an incredibly tedious chore that will plumb the darkest depths of your vocabulary.

And c’mon, coins? 48 freakin’ coins?! We’re not game designers, but we can instantly think of tons of cooler ways to prove ourselves to Mr. White. Send us out on snow patrol to rescue, stranded boarders in remote locations. Or make us rack up umpteen trick points off a massive jump. Just don’t shackle us to one of the lamest, laziest clichés in gaming.

Aside from the occasional but minor glitchouts (oddly placed invisible walls; camera freak-outs), the game’s other critical mistake is its map. Not only is simply scrolling around a stupidly clunky process, but the map also restricts your ability to fast-travel, limiting you to teleporting to the top of chair lifts or helicopter drop-offs. If we have a chopper at our disposal, why can’t we land wherever we like? This is fantasy, not reality, and trudging all over the slopes to find an event — especially when we’re just trying to ride with our friends — is all kinds of lame.

A lot of us are baffled that snowboarding has been so deathly quiet on 360, and if you’re dying for the next SSX or Amped, Shaun White Snowboarding won’t be the game you’re hoping for. If you’re a serious boarding fan, the mini- MMO multiplayer is totally worth a look, but otherwise, you have better games to play.