Shaun White Snowboarding

Actually, it's a mixed bag. It's a solid choice if you played other snowboarding games and want to try something new, plus it's cheap! There's an entertaining arcadey snowboarding game here for sure, but it's got some design quirks. Even if those were smoothed out though, Shaun White just doesn't stand out much. The controls are pretty straightforward and responsive, but there's some weird choices with the the actual layout & configuration. Most stuff feels natural, but decisions like going from using the stick for general movement to using Triggers for rail balancing, or the fact that Jump and Speed Up are X and Tri respectively (just try hitting them at the same time), never feel quite right. It's good-looking though. Environments have style, and clean textures while the somewhat chunky character designs have smooth models and materials. It's a good cartoony look that runs well. The UI and Menus have all got this "edgy cartoon" look that compares well to games like SSX Blur or Need for Speed Nitro. Everything looks nice, but doesn't push the PS2 in any way. The soundtrack's great though. It features good bands from the time - like Mooney Suzuki - plus classics like Heart, and matches/sets the tone well. It's in-line with other "extreme" games at the time, like Burnout and Tony Hawk. The Progression is my biggest hang-up. You can't time attack, you can't do a single race, you can't just DO any event you want; you HAVE to go into "Quest Mode" first and pick slopes that have multiple objectives to complete, all active at once. So you're going to split your attention or, more likely, you're just gonna come back multiple times, focusing on different objectives. It's messy, and it's designed so that everything you accomplish gives you currency and XP. Which you get to spend to both level up your stats and buy new boards. It's.... stupid? At least, I don't like it. Its like a bunch of crappy PS3/Xbox 360 games from EA that just wanted to get players hooked and addicted to spend on microtransactions, and games like that are POINTLESS here on the PS2 where you can't do that. So you end up thinking, "these controls are bad" when really, you just have to grind with garbage boards/stats until you can level up first. I find it kinda annoying. I received the whole thing; case, manual, disc - which are in great condition. My PS2 Slim has no problem reading the disc; everything else seems almost good-as-new. So no complaints about any of that.