The story of "Shaun White Snowboarding" is a tale of two fun, distinct games that, if joined together, probably would have formed something better than either attempt on its own.
Unsurprisingly, the feature nod goes to "White's" beautiful Xbox 360/PS3 incarnation, which boasts four (or five, if you get the Target-branded special edition) huge mountains, lets you tackle challenges in whatever order you please and features open-world online multiplayer (16 players). It also plays nicely, with easy controls and smooth animation leading the way.
Problem is, a major chunk of the game's single-player objectives center around platformer-style item collection, which isn't exactly the best use of a forward-moving snowboarding game. A clumsy interface makes locating these items trickier than it should be. While the ability to set a warp-to marker at will makes it easy to take multiple stabs at nabbing an item, the process feels intrusive when you'd rather be racing down a mountain and racking up trick points.
That's something the Wii version -- a completely different game in every respect -- does much better. "Road Trip" is less attractive, less ambitious and more linear than its 360/PS3 cousin, but the events fall more consistently in line with what one expects and wants from a snowboarding game.
"Trip" also benefits from excellent use of the balance board as a mock snowboard, although the game also works surprisingly well with just the Wiimote. The Wiimote scheme is considerably easier, but mastering the board is considerably more fun. In a nice touch, the game adjusts the target times and scores for every event to reflect your control method, and you're free to change back and forth between events without sacrificing your overall progress.
The downside to either method is a familiar song for Wii games: less flexibility in controls. With buttons at a premium, your range of acrobatics is sorely limited. While pulling tricks off isn't a mindless cakewalk, the sense of risk and danger is considerably less than what the other game allows. "Trip" would have benefited from some kind of nunchuck attachment support, but the disparity between that degree of control and that of the available methods probably was too large for Ubisoft to justify its inclusion.
In the end, neither game completely nails it. Fortunately, neither game blows it, either. Issues await you no matter which poison you pick, but if you're steeled for those issues, a good time awaits, as well.
