Every single time I think to try Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder again, I get proven why I wanted to snap the disc in half. Despite it's appearance, it is a money grab that tries to adapt the action sport of seasonal snowboarding with the tried and true formula of Neversoft's THPS recipe.
It's not the first time that I got a game from a youtuber playing it, that would be DanTDM and Skate 3, but that was a happy one. Skate 3 is a game where you can just have fun messing around instead of trying to emulate skating to it's most boringest. With Shaun Palmer, I guy that I used to watch, Insetik47, played this and made it look so approachable.
Let me tell you now, it's a tedious game that while it has a little merit, gets bogged down with the detractions provided by a outsourced development studio (and scraps taken from the bankrupt studio that made Cool Boarders), and falls into the negatives that were already smoothed out by future THPS titles.
And has a 3-lane pathing too, which means that you can't one-run like you can in other THPS titles. They band-aided this by introducing circled checkpoints that loop you earlier into the stage, in case you did or are about to miss an objective. While on paper this sounds good, with the ability to find the good part of the level like a half-pipe and juice points there. The execution of it leaves a lot to be desired. Again, in comparison to THPS, it's like playing a game where all the levels are downhill jams, except this is THPS1 so there aren't loops for you to whittle the timer down. You screw up, restart.
You can't even soft-restart like in SSX (This will be compared too frequently, because SSX did it right) so you either have to drift in suffering and hope you can finangle yourself off the crevice, losing valuable time, or bite the bullet and hard restart. Remember that there's some goals that are spread throughout the entire level, and if you miss it you need to take a checkpoint back and spend time to get another chance.
Also, I admit that this is a skill issue on my part, but if you want to double down, go get a copy/emulate it and have a go at trying to get a big combo off a half pipe. Remember, this is downhill, so you slowly inch down through the halfpipe while trying to get points. If you get too absorbed in tricking, you'll inevitably end up crashing at the end because you were vert and the halfpipe tapered out. If you read the manual (which I sincerely doubt unless you were either hardcore or that desperate) to level out of a vert, you press [L2 + R2]. If you were like me, you instead pressed [UP] or just [R2] to try and level out, and get frustrated when it doesn't translate. It was a demo in THPS3, why did they change it?
It was merciful at least in the way that there wasn't any comp levels. God, that would just chainsaw my patience for this game into pieces. Oh, and the fact that one of the early levels is smashing Yuppie's latte stations up in Colorado's resorts. Speaking of which, in revealing myself in being an idiot when it comes to snowboarding culture...
The way the game is marketed feels like trying to emulate some of the punk attitude that skateboarding inherently has, but then you get pros sponsored by oakley and stuff. I get it, that kind of thing happened with, well, the skateboarding industry really. I could type out another entry talking about the sausage fest that was old skateboarding, and oooh....World Industries... but's thats besides the point.
With the few snowboarding and skiing vids that I thrifted, it isn't as street as Shaun Palmer is trying to make it out to be. It's more natural and free feeling, just enjoying the wilderness or appreciating the resorts like a fun park. One Warren Miller film had some skits, but it was satirizing the way that Snowboarders were trying to cater to the Extreme audience, and to make it look 'macho' or rather 'sexy' to be a boarder. Dude, you are engaging in a seasonal sport that costs MONEY to even try! Don't act like you're all that when it's 3-4 figures to even get there with proper gear!
Maybe it's just Shaun Palmer's attitude kinda bleeding into it. Again, another entry, but it's me bitching about the people who reminisce about when the culture was true, like truly crass. I get that it was a different era, but now in the age of MONEY, you can play if you can follow the regulations. I would rather not have my rockstars die of drug overconsumption, and they rather have a balanced and happy life.
Comparatively, it does feel like a snowboarding game, because the physics makes me feel like I'm on a skateboard deck coated in 7 layers of wax. Different snows provide different amounts of traction, but not in a fun SSX way where it can be beneficial. More like you either are allowed to somewhat move or you get stuck in molasses. In a level where you NEED to be on a certain pathway to earn certain goals, that's a pain. Isn't restarting the entire level punishment enough?
The game also adopts the leveling mechanic in THPS too, so you will get thrown off if you land at an obtuse angle. Soft angles might give you a sloppy modifier, but hard angles bail you, and in this game it's quite lengthy. In a game like Tony Hawk, which is full of flat and level angles to keep track of which is safe, Shaun Palmer has none of that, because you're going down a mountain. So you have to gut check your position and hope that the game is merciful enough to at least just give you a sloppy rating. One level has a start point where it's a ramp full of jagged rocks, and it's not uncommon to just eat shit off of launching and landing on said rocks. Pair with the restarting because of missing a goal that eats time, and you get an aggravator.
Another papercut through the webbing of my fingers. Logically, you would bail if you smacked off of an object at a sufficient velocity, but in a game that becomes another fun sponge. Did you pass a railing too low? Bailed. Did you bump into a wall? No more Special meter, screw you. Were you trying to abuse the rails like how THPS rewards rails like crazy? How about a meager amount plus you bail. If you bail in the air, you can't recover in the air, you have to skid to a good amount for the game to allow you to play again. If you fall off a ledge while recovering, bail animation resets, wasting even more time. The game says mashing buttons will get you back up quicker, but I feel like at best it would slim the animation down to maybe a good quarter second if I was in a good mood. The level design is also both dense and sparse, so if you get into a busy part of the level, half of it's going to be spent trying to not bail again, and trying to maneuver out of your trouble spot.
They're locked to certain characters, just like in THPS1. I'd assume that they would try to remedy this in the sequel, but at that point the Activision O2 label was already evident of trying to recapture lightning in a bottle. There is a custom character option, which I foolishly decided to start with, and from what I can gleam from the speedrun.com boards, what you name yourself influences which set of specials you get to use. My custom boarder's name gave me two aerial specials, and thats it.
Oh, and the special tricks are performed with motion inputs, so if you want to try to make the score requirements, you are going to learn half circles and love it. I just decided to play the game in thumbstick rather than in D-pad.
This is purely muscle memory, but I try to do flips like in THPS so I can build both multiplier and score, but in Shaun Palmer, a snowboard can't really be flipped off of because it's stuck to your feet. You know what Dear Soft did instead? Canned animations that can't be done from flatground. You need to find a bump to launch off of if you even want to entertain the idea of using 'flips'. You may say to just use spingrabs, but then I would counter with the point of the 'flip' part of the tricks being kind of moot. Why would you go for body flips when you can spam grabs, which can give you even more score and multiplier than if you chained flips?
If we take away all of those minor/major gripes about the game, I did like the presentation and the music listing. You need a good music listing if you were going to make a THPS clone, which this game sadly is. I still play the playlist in my car from time to time.
The UI is stylized but not too obnoxious, but it gets points taken away because there's a little delay in the menu being active, so I can't insta-restart. The options sub menu's are great, why does the controls and the sound options have their own dedicated stylized menu? Also I have no idea why they made Shaun White's headshot so goofy. The other boarder headshots weren't anything to gab about, but Shaun looks like a funny pencil I would buy at the scholastic book fair.
I'm looking at the manual and it advertises 411VM, Palmer boards, and a Tony Hawk 3 CD-ROM. One of the bullet points is a Tony Hawk Winamp Player. Did they actually release the winamp player? I tried searching it up but all I got are just the booklet scans and a fanmade winamp skin from Planet Tony Hawk. I need to actually witness this. If it's just a slathered picture with a lazy overlay I'll spit.