Full Review

I have both Avalanche games, the original one that came out for the Nintendo 64 and this one for the Gamecube. I still believe that Nintendo made this game to compliment the release of another snowboard game called SSX. You can tell that some of the stuff in the game was rushed, nonetheless Nintendo made a very solid game all things considered.

Graphics 8/10
This game makes a huge leap graphically when I compare it to the original game. This game has much better graphics in all areas. The graphics are much crisper, smoother, and enriched with the quintessential snowy details. The courses are also tremendously done in this game. However when you start a new race, everything might seem foggy as you look down a slope since the wind is blowing the snow around. But as the race progresses and you tackle the slope the graphics just percolate to greatness.

The characters have also been upgraded. Each character model now look more realistically. I especially love how the Gamecube renders the clothes of the snowboarders. As a snowboarder crashes in the snow they become covered by snow, which did not happen in the original. A really cool effect, its pretty neat to see your snowboarder gorged with snow as you tumble through the white wilderness.

To get technical, I love how the frame rate has been increased tremendously, maybe by even 5 folds. The slow frame rate was a huge detriment to the first avalanche game. The frame rate only decreases minimally, rarely drastically, when your in a four player mode and the screen is split up into four quadrants.

Sound 3/10
I really despised the music. The music is really just punk rock and heavy rock type songs. The soundtrack is pretty large since each course has its own music, and there are a total of 15 courses in all. I guess I only hated the music since I really dislike rock songs. I did like a couple songs on the track, but in my opinion the music did not fit the snowboard experience the game offered, I constantly took off the music during playing the game. The soundtrack is really just based on preference, so lets say you like rock, you will love the soundtrack since its engulfed in it.

Now to stray away from the soundtrack, the other sounds of the game were decent at best. The snowboarders sounded stupid when they grunted and what not, while the environment also lacked in this department. The sound of the board over the snow really was bad and unrealistic. The part of the sound I really enjoyed was the sound of an avalanche coming, which truly did sound like an avalanche coming down a slope mountain.

Gameplay 6/10
The game is made up of a couple modes which are match races, gate challenges, time trials, trick mode and a coin mode. All these must be played extensively to unlock a bunch of things like new boards, costumes, and characters. The coin mode makes you search the track for all of the pieces of a coin, which is a really daunting challenge since they put some of the pieces in some hard to reach places. Time trials is basically a practice mode in which you race on the different courses to try to post your fastest times. Also in trial mode you need to collect coins in which you use to unlock things. The match race and gate challenges are just essentially races against others. And in trick mode you just post a high score by doing tricks and combos.

The main story mode is based upon you picking a snowboarder and beating the rest of a world in a barrage of snowboard races. The mode comes in three different difficulty levels. But there is no real different between the easy, medium and hard options since the computer is really weak no matter what difficulty you pick. The story mode is fun, although is very short since most of the courses are only one to two minutes long.

1080 Avalanche also has a multiplayer option. In this you can play with up to three other human players. This mode is okay, but since the screen is split to accommodate the four players, the frame rate slows down and could lag bad at some points. But most of the time it is very crisp and smooth, probably the most enjoyable option.

My favorite part of the game was the avalanches. At first when you play against computer you probably wont be able to trigger an avalanche since it is very hard to do until you master the controls, which are very easy to master. There are also some avalanche based levels in which you only have to outrun a avalanche, which is tremendously fun. You use avalanches in normal races to annihilate your competition, but it sucks when you constantly become buried in them.

Replay Value 6/10
The replay value is moderate. The shortness of the story mode really kills the replay value. But other modes like the time trial, coin mode, and other modes will keep you playing for a while. Also trying to collect all the boarders, boards, levels, and etc will also help consume some time. Overall I say you will play about 20 hours if you collect and complete everything.

Overall I think this is a good game to buy since the Gamecube library was rather small. If you liked the first Avalanche you will love this game since it really upgraded from it predecessor. If you don't like these types of games you might want to rent it first, some might be delightfully surprised by it and some might just hate it.