Snow boarder XS

Winter sports are not an easy-to-indulge hobby, unless you happen to live somewhere where snow is present all throughout the year and there are plenty of mountains around willing to lend a slope. Thus, skiing, snowboarding or ice skating are generally practiced for only a few months a year and even then the weather's got a word to say in it anyway.

Snow boarder XS is an arcade game in which you get to ride along on a snowboard whenever you feel like it, regardless of what season peeks inside from the other side of the curtains. It may not be a simulator per se and it may look rather old and unfinished, but the atmosphere should be enough to give you a few chills and get you in the right mood, albeit the game itself is pretty disappointing.

To start off with, there aren't too many things you can do, since you can just go down the slope on a few tracks, avoid the obstacles and maybe perform a few tricks whenever a ramp makes its appearance. But even so, the tricks are performed by simply pressing a certain key on your keyboard, which is pretty anti-climactic and certainly not exciting enough to really make you feel like the snow is about to swallow you at the first wrong move.

The most annoying thing at the game is the fact that almost every stage feels and looks the same, while the tricks do not vary at all, regardless of how you try to embellish them. It is possible to fall if you do not time them right, but the tumbles are quite laughable and they certainly do not make you feel the pain and adrenaline of losing your balance while descending the mountain slope at top speed.

Visually, there really isn't anything to admire or remember from the game, not even the snow itself, which forms about 90% of the environment anyway. The models are very low-poly, the particle effects are almost missing entirely and the shadows really are missing entirely. But the most painful of all happens to be the surrounding landscape, because it certainly demonstrates the fact that no one even tried to make it look at least remotely plausible.

Although Snow boarder XS is by no means the product of a highly-respected studio, people still need to receive something in exchange for their time and money. The game does not manage to provide you with anything and you really cannot have more than a few seconds of fun with it, unless it happens to be your first encounter with a video game.