Welcome to DS on DS. This is where I'm going to be taking a look at the Nintendo DS and all of it's games. And when I say all, I mean it. We will be going from Metroid Prime: Hunters to Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends. From Tetris DS to Barbie 12 Dancing Princesses. Yes, I said Barbie.

This week I am going to be taking a look at Shaun White Snowboarding.

Winter is in it's final phase, so I figured now would be the perfect time to check out Shaun White Snowboarding.  I'm kind of glad I waited on this one.  I also kinda wish I hadn't decided to play this game at all.

When I first started up the game, I was surprisingly greeted by Stabbing Westward - Save Yourself.  You don't exactly expect to hear a song from '98 when you start up a snowboarding game.  Also unexpected was Sweet's Ballroom Blitz.  To me, a lot of the choices for the soundtrack were just plain odd.  It is always nice to have an eclectic soundtrack, but it was put to waste with this game.

Starting up the single player, you get to choose from 4 very generic characters.  You've got the blond snow bunny, the black dude with dreads, the bad boy, and the guy who looks like he actually knows how to snowboard.  I chose the snow bunny.  After you make your selection, you get to go through the tutorial.  And this is one of those "please shoot me in the head" tutorials that is so mind-numbingly dull that it could completely turn you off from the game before you even got to the actual gameplay.  The first part of the tutorial is how to turn, go faster, and slow down.  After the guy tells you how to perform those actions, you get to put them to use by going through gates.  The problem here though is that after you make it through the mandatory five gates, it doesn't stop.  You actually have to go all the way to the end of the course.  It isn't ultra long, but it clocks in at just under a minute and it is a time waster.  I know plenty of people who would have put the game down here and never touched it again.

Anyway, after you complete the movement/tricking/grinding tutorials, you get to select your first event.  I started out with the game's first race, and promptly trounced the AI.  Every subsequent race I played ended the same way.  Maybe I was just getting lucky, but I got first place every time.  This game is just way too easy.

And guess what?  This is yet another game that for some unknown reason, the developers decided that you should only be able to use the touch screen to control your character.  This game needed to have the option to use the D-pad.  There is no reason why you can only use the touch screen.  Maybe if the controls were more responsive this wouldn't be an issue, however as it stands they are not and therefore this game suffers.

Just about the only thing this game has going for it is how it looks.  Then again, it also looks like they lifted eighty percent of this straight from Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam.  It has that same cel-shaded look to it only it is slightly more on the cartoonish side.

This game has very little in the way of redeeming features.  Your money would be better saved for other games.  Like Peggle DS.

Rating: 3/10