Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands

When people ask me what my favorite snowboarding game is, they're often surprised when I quickly say SSX3. It is, after all, not just a great snowboarding title, but it's also one of my favorite games of all time. Maybe it's just me, but I love exploring the large, open-world mountains looking for hidden items and out-of-the-way objects to trick off of. There have been a lot of snowboarding games released in the last 19 years, some of which are fantastic, but few have managed to duplicate what I loved about SSX3. That is, until now. Let me introduce you to Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands, a new extreme sports game built around racing, tricking and, most importantly, exploring twelve unique peaks from all around the world. It may not be as over-the-top and flashy as the competition, but I'm here to tell you that this snowboarding game succeeds where so many others have failed.

You might need to get real close to the screen for this review, because you control the teeny tiny snowboarder shredding their way down one of the most intense mountain ranges in the entire world. With a bird's eye view of the action and the character always facing the camera, I'll admit that Grand Mountain Adventure takes a little getting used to. This isn't the stylish, neon-drenched world of SSX and longtime snowboarding fans may be confused by the overhead perspective, but take a moment and let your eyes adjust. Once you get used to the small characters and unusual camera angle, you'll find a surprisingly deep sports game with enough content to keep you going for months.

While the look may be unusual, the general progression is not. The goal of the game is to go around completing a series of familiar events in hopes of winning ski passes, which you'll use to open up new events and harder mountains. This is one of those games that seems small and limited at first, but after you start collecting the ski passes and the different peaks begin to open up, you'll quickly realize that Grand Mountain Adventure can be overwhelming at times.

If you've played a snowboarding game before, then you'll recognize a lot of the event types. You have the normal race, where you're competing against the clock to speed through a bunch of gates and get to the finish line without crashing. You'll also find trick events, where the goal is find jumps, downed trees, bridges and other things to pull stunts on and over. There are also variations on the race and trick events, such as trying to jump a set distance before time runs out and racing during an avalanche. What's more, there are a bunch of goofier event types, including ones where you go around smacking beginning skiers and try to avoid bear attacks.

Where other snowboarding games would turn each race and trick session into a big deal, the events in Grand Mountain Adventure are relatively small and short. It's common to finish a race in well under a minute, and some of the trick courses are only twenty or thirty seconds long. But just because the events are short doesn't mean you'll beat them on your first attempt. This is the kind of game where every success story comes with a dozen failed attempts. Sometimes you'll hit a jump wrong, while other times you'll come up short of the score you're shooting for. You'll be thankfully that the start of the event is only one button press away.

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While the events are short and sweet, I would argue that the real fun is found in exploring Grand Mountain Adventure's twelve massive, open-world peaks. It's here where you'll stumble upon hidden events, secret ski passes and a bunch of other bonus material. This is also the best way to get to know each mountain's unique personality. You never know what you're going to find when you go off the beaten path, and the game is good about rewarding you for the effort. Best of all, once you've found a new location, you'll be able to fast travel to it and all of the different events. Whether it's through the menu or on a snowboard, getting around in this game is easy and painless.

Let's not simply gloss over the different locations and their personalities. I like how some destinations are bright, colorful and overly welcoming, while others will be cold, lifeless and not for the faint of heart. Some mountains are located right next to a lively village, while other peaks are in the middle of nowhere. I love the subtle color changes and wide variety of landscape, all of which becomes bigger and more treacherous the deeper in you go. And with twelve challenging mountains to explore and conquer, I can assure you that you won't be able to beat this game in one or two sittings. With so many events to play and secrets to find, you're going to be at Grand Mountain Adventure for a long time.

Thankfully, the gameplay is deep enough to warrant that kind of investment. Pulling off tricks and combos is easy and fun once you get used to using the dual analog sticks. There aren't nearly as many moves as SSX and other snowboarding games, but you won't miss them. There's enough variety to the moves to keep the trick events from becoming too repetitive. Plus, there are buttons you can press and hold if you want to cut through snow in a particular way or hit a tight turn just right. There's a lot more going on here than initially meets the eyes, which is something I can say about every part of Grand Mountain Adventure.

The one place where it does stumble is when it comes to the events. I don't mind the bite-sized nature of them, but wish that some of them were a bit more elaborate. It would have been fun to actually race against other skiers and snowboarder, but all we get is the clock and a ghost of our best run. I also found some of the events to be terrible, especially the races with invisible gates. These are dark events where you have to find the correct path using context clues. It's hard enough winning when you can see the track, so taking away the gates felt needlessly cruel. Instead of making the game more exciting, all it does is make things a lot more frustrating.

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My other gripe is that the levels and events don't open up fast enough. I found myself needing to go back and replay a lot of the stages and purposely hunt for more ski passes. The game should have unlocked more events and mountains right from the start, making the opening hours less of a slog. The good news is that once things open up, you'll almost have too much to choose from. Then again, that's not a bad problem to have.

For some, the steep $35 asking price may be a sticking point, but I would argue that Grand Mountain Adventure has more than enough content to warrant the cost. There are well over a hundred race and trick events, plus a lot of varied missions, tons of extras to find and, as I've mentioned a few times already, a dozen mountains ready and waiting to be explored. Even after putting so many hours into it, I still have a lot of events to complete and ski passes to collect. I can see myself sticking with this game long after the review has been posted, which is rare these days. It looks a little funky and it could have used a little more style, but Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands is the most fun I've had in a snowboarding game since SSX3.