Introduction
Amped is an extreme sport snowboarding game, where you must perform several
tricks to get points. As you progress through the different locations around
the globe you have to acquire more points than the stage before. On the
levels you have to obtain two sets of points: Normal & Media. Normal are
points which you get from doing any trick on the stage, whereas media points
are where you perform the moves in front of the cameras. The basic premise of
the game is to work your way up the world rankings, starting off at rank 130
and as you complete the amount of points your objective tells you to, you
move up 1 rank each time. Amped is probably your best bet for an 'extreme
sport' on the X Box.

Gameplay
Unfortunately, there is no difficulty setting on this game. However there are
one or two things that make the game harder for you anyway. As you unlock
more levels you are asked to obtain more points for Media and Normal. The
points range from 10,000 to 500,000. The media, is not so bad, that ranges
from 5,000 to 200,000. Before you start your quest you must pick your gear,
from head to foot (and your board of cause). You also pick up different
sponsors as you progress on your quest. On every stage there are 3
sponsorship levels, on this your objective is not to acquire points, but to
impress the sponsor, to do this you must perform moves to the categories they
like. I.e. if they like Spins And Flips, you have to do front flips, Back
flips, Backside 180's, that sort of stuff. On these sponsorship runs there is
a bar at the top of the screen, u must fill that bar up, until it says AMPED,
but if you don't perform moves every so often, the bar will start to
decrease, also if you fall off your board it takes off a proportion of that
bar, and you have to fill it back up again. Every sponsor you pick up, gives
you a new set of clothes and boards, so you can never get bored with this
game if you are a fashion freak, and if you are getting bored of having the
same old clothes all the time, you surely wont be short of decisions to get
new clothing. Finished the sponsors? Well your quest doesn't end there, also
every stage has 3 Pro's to complete. Pro's are when you go head to head with
a pro snowboarder and you must do your moves in roughly the same place he
presents his, and to beat him you must either perform a trick which has the
same amount of points he/she has, or get higher than he/she has. There is one
last part to complete on the different locations. On every stage there are
'explores' to collect, these are snowmen, which are scattered all over the
stage. On each stage, there are 8 to collect. These however are not vital to
becoming the No.1 snowboarder, but if you do want to collect all 8 of these,
then you will climb up a rank. The multiplayer segment of this game is
probably the only thing what disappoints the game itself. You can have game
modes such as: Highest Score and Best Trick, which are pretty much
self-explanatory. On multiplayer this gives you the chance to pit your wits
against your friends, but playing with your friends on this game isn't all it
makes out to be. If I were you, I would stick to the single player career
mode.


Story
The graphics for this game are totally awesome. If you examined the moves
with the ones performed in real life, I can guarantee that nine times out of
ten they will look exactly the same. In Amped they really give you an in
depth look of all of the aerobatics that you perform. I know this may seem
irrelevant, but the clothing you wear moves with the character and is nicely
textured. The location- and terrain graphics are also great, from the
steepest cliffs to snowy mountains, the graphics are made to look as if you
are actually at the site of where you are boarding. I promise you, with these
graphics, you will not be disappointed.

The basic sound you get on the game is pretty lame, but as the X-Box has a
hard drive, you can upload songs/albums you have ripped to your hard drive,
so you can listen to your favourite tunes while playing the game. As well as
listening to your favourite beats while riding the slopes you also get to
hear the media making fun of you, this is normally when you fall of your
board, or they will be cheering you on. Such taunts as "Why Don't You Try
Skiing" and "Ugh Sketchy Man" are sure to keep you amused.


Graphics
So, would I replay this game again? Well, if I had got to Rank 1, then
obviously there would be no point because as I stated earlier, there is no
difficulty level on this game, however if you really wanted to get to number
one in the world, then this game really does require a lot of patience to
complete, so I wouldn't bother going back to the same level over and over
again because you will not complete these stages first time. On the other
hand I do have a lot of patience, so I would play this game over and over
again just to get that number one spot! If you were looking an extreme sport
game for the X-Box, then Amped would be my first pick.