There's a relaxed vibe about everything Shredders does that's almost endearing. It jogs my memory a bit of how OlliOlli felt just like a satirisation of skater culture, except Shredders attempts it with no hint of irony and it all feels a bit goofy. The humour, which ranges from certifiably insane to awkward gaffs worth Larry David's second cousin, doesn't really ever land.
The story is a mixture of main and side missions, though they're hard to differentiate. With a number of regions to see, it doesn't take very long for any pattern to emerge with Shredders. You'll meet a pro-and I'm using the game's word for your here-and learn their discipline, tail them for a line or two and ultimately wind up doing something spectacularly outrageous. It is a fun enough core loop that keeps things mildly interesting but the most profound changes come with the terrain as Shredders has you master parks, backcountry, and traditional pow. You will find enough missions to sustain the storyline mode for around ten hours, but any fun to be had inside the game's open-world from there is going to be player-made.
Shredders definitely built itself in the Skate blueprint and, like Skate, you will get from it whatever you're ready to put in. Although its control scheme is similar to Skate's for the reason that it's all about fine, calculated stick control, after the day it is easy enough to cruise down a line and make short work of the level's most primary objective and move onto the next. Despite being accessible in a lot of ways, without a trick guide of sorts it can become a real mammoth task remembering everything. The pause menu often has objective-specific tips that remind you how to achieve that 180° Rodeo, but it doesn't always.
That being said, I believe the act of snowboarding and all of its intricacies may be the one thing Shredders does nail. The game feels really fluid, considered, and confident in the representation of what's a pretty nuanced sport. When you are not flubbing launches and undercooking your rotation, the game look super fluid and it flows really nicely. It's when you're beginning that it may look a tad clunky as you're nutting it out.
The game isn't at all punishing should you stuff up a line, though. Like many racing games did, there's a packed-in rewind function that places you many seconds before whatever disaster you shred into. As someone who's far more familiar with skateboarding and it is great shape, I discovered the visual language of snowboarding to become rather unreadable during this game. Parks felt routine and straightforward, but leafing down a snow-white mountain while trying to call to mind an encyclopedic move set wasn't a stroll around the block. As snowboarding is clearly a momentum sport and gravity does its best work downhill, I understand the developer adding outlandish features just like a snowmobile to tug my sorry butt back uphill, a tow winch to provide myself just a little speed boost heading right into a ramp, or even a drone that's ideal for not only consuming the gorgeous backcountry sights however it can serve as fast travel for that player within reason.
It's all small things like this that speak to a developer respecting the player's time, and I'm all for your.
It's either fortuitous that snowboarders are clad top to bottom in layers pretty much all of times, or even the team was wary of their limits since the character designs include all been obfuscated by baggy protective gear and goggles. It does not remove from how lifelike and crisp the animation could be, or how stunning the scenery can be as the sun's rays breaks within the horizon and also the cool orange glow hits the pow, however it did seem like I had been hearing disembodied voices the further I managed to get.
Like a cool breeze, the game's rather nondescript synthwave tracks wash out and in, and, as forgettable as they are, it is a relief they're more widespread than the game's voiceover work. It seems nothing was learned from hearing the stilted, wooden performances within a decade of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater titles as pro athletes-like, but not limited to, Jamie Anderson-lend their voices to give the game a dash of authenticity, which never seems like a worthwhile trade-off for quality.
