Price: £44.99 Players: 1-4 Amped is a snowboarding simulator which loses one vital aspect that I enjoyed in its closest rival, SSX Tricky, namely the competitive race mode. This is akin to Quake 3 being equally irritating because there's no single-player mode to work my way through. That's what was best about those games and since Quake 2 had online gaming options on the PC, it seemed like sheer laziness not to include it in the sequel. Hence, since it's possible to practice away to your heart's content in the SSX series, when it comes to Amped that's all there is to do as you meander down one course after another, testing out as many tricks as you can from the 1000 available along over 1500 jumps and rails. The better you do, the more you can progress. Music-wise, the game contains 150 indie music tracks, but of course, if you wish to add your own it's easy to do so given the Xbox's ability to let you rip CD tracks to the console's hard drive for the purpose of using them within the game itself.

It's a realistic and life-like saunter down the piste, but the only bad side to it is that one piece of the hill looks a lot like another, save for different humps and bumps, so a bit of variety wouldn't go amiss. I never got bored with the tracks in SSX Tricky, for example. You'll also be glad of the chance to put your own music into the game since the tracks supplied sound a bit on the flat side by comparison and the SFX aren't much to get excited about. Again, I know I'm comparing, but in an SSX Tricky race with the music, the booming voice and fireworks, it actually managed to create some kind of atmosphere - something severely lacking here.

The gameplay is much the same, with the addition that you have to hold down the "B" button to guide yourself along a rail or the edge of something, rather than just landing on it. On the downside, when you inevitably do crash it takes a while to get going again. For those who must play Amped, I'd recommend you try before you buy.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2002.