Shredders Review
Shredders
Publisher: Foampunch
Developer: Foampunch
Genre:
PEGI: E
Comments:
You and your friend Scotty are making goofball snowboarding videos at the Frozen Wood resort when brand ambassador Lisa makes an offer for some sponsored clips. She gives you a glimpse into a whole new world of snowboarding, with pro riders, snowmobiles, and epic spots to hit. Give it all you got and shred your way into the kick-ass invitational!
Unlock a huge OPEN WORLD full of pow and parks, gorgeous scenery, and amazing lines. Every area is hand-sculpted for maximum flow, and the snow is always fresh!
Shredders is for powder fanatics and park rats, for street snowboarders and backcountry explorers. Mastering the DIVERSE TERRAINS is challenging but o so satisfying.
Shred with feeling and refine your STYLE. No snowboarding game has ever had this level of control. Carving, buttering, tweaking tricks, and the sensation of floating on fresh powder all feels amazing.
Play online and SHRED TOGETHER with friends: with multiplayer built into its core, you’ll be hitting the top spots with your buddies.
Ride with the best PRO SNOWBOARDERS, learn their moves, and shine! Meet Jamie Anderson, Kevin Backstrom, Jake Blauvelt, Sebbe De Buck, Elias Elhardt, Gimbal God, Marcus Kleveland, Arthur Longo, Tor Lundström, Leanne Pelosi, Jill Perkins, Zeb Powell, and Rene Rinnekangas in Shredders.
Unlock the pros’ REAL GEAR, brought to you by Bataleon, Beyond Medals, Burton, CAPiTA, Dakine, Darn Tough, Db, DC, Deeluxe, Dragon, Electric, Gimbal God, Giro, Gnu, GoPro, Junkyard, K2, Kleveland, Nitro, Oakley, Picture, POW, Purl, Recess, Ride, Rome, Shed., Sierra at Tahoe, Skullcandy, Smith, Stance, The North Face, ThirtyTwo, Thule, Union, U.S. Snowboard Team, Vans, and Volcom.
Shredders is definitely a unique entry in the snowboarding game realm, it has more of a guerilla feel to it as you are a struggling youtube trying to get those clicks and subs to your videos. Definitely appealing to today’s youth. You start off just pulling little stunts and pranks to get attention and eventually find yourself running into and befriending some of the biggest names in snowboarding today, all voiced by themselves too.
The environments you traverse and experience are pretty well designed and have a grounded authentic feel to them, they have various different runs to explore all with different types of jumps, ramps, and rails to explore and trick off of. One of the very different things about this game vs others like Riders Republic or let’s say a favorite of mine SSX Tricky is the entire game is based in reality. Meaning you can’t pull off impossible tricks, they are harder to pull off which makes it even more rewarding when you really nail something you’ve been trying to do for a while. There are all sorts of different events and missions to take part in all with bonus objectives you can pull off for maximum rewards in the form of new gear and clothing from a plethora of real brands and designs that the pros are rocking themselves.
I will say the areas of the game are pretty well done, the game doesn’t pull off anything hyper-realistic in the form of graphics but everything looks pretty smooth and runs well to boot. You have the option of selecting your mission on the map and dropping in right near it or you are free to explore the mountains as you see fit and find missions that way as well which is a nice touch if you just want to chill and do some stunts without worrying about objectives, goals or scoring. You can definitely tell the developers took thought and care in the design of the runs, also probably pulling in real-life inspiration as well. The music in the game is all done by Belgian producer Jennifur and was all original, it all fits the vibe of the overall game with electronic chill synth music throughout. While none of the tracks seem to stick in my head after my gameplays it definitely lends themselves well to just kicking back, relaxing, and getting lost in the world of Shredders.
The character models in the game all move as they should performing their stunts and boarding down the hill, the focus is on the brand name merchandise and gear more than your character, who is a faceless snowboarder as are all the other characters which I found a little disappointing but, I can totally understand being an indy game there have to be sacrifices made. One of the cool things is each pro in the game gets to voice their own characters which I bet was a fun experience for them to do. The downside is, it’s pretty obvious that none of them have a future in voice acting like all of the voice-over work (Pros and Otherwise) falls in the realm of cheesy with stiff and forced performances. While it was nice to have a fully voiced story to it, I just wish it was better done.
All in all, Shredders is definitely worth checking out if you are a fan of the sport or of other snowboarding games, especially if you want to just relax and play a snowboarding game that focuses on the realism of the sport vs being some over the top superhero event. Definitely, a lot of love and care went into this game from developer Foampunch.
Bonus points if you have Gamepass as this game will be dropping on release right into the program for you all to check out. It will also be available on Steam for PC players as well.
Trailer
Article By Kevin Austin
Kevin Austin has been in gaming journalism in one way or another since the launch of the Nintendo Gamecube. Married and father of 3 children he has been gaming since the ripe age of 6 when he got his first NES system and over 30 years later he is still gaming almost daily. Kevin is also co-founder of the Play Some Video Games (PSVG) Podcast network which was founded over five years ago and is still going strong. Some of his favorite gaming series includes Fallout and Far Cry, he is a sucker for single player adventure games (hence his big reviews for Playstation), and can frequently be found getting down in one battle royale or another. If it's an oddball game, odds are he's all about it.
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