Amped 3 is wack and I never use that word to describe something. Luke tells me that maybe I should say it's ghettosauce, but that makes me uncomfortable, so I think I will stick with whack.

Like the Ampeds that have come before, the game is a free-roaming snowboarder that is heavy on the style and tricks and light on the I can do that in the real world without breaking my neck.

What Amped 3 brings to the table is a sense of the absurd that you wouldn't think would fit in a 360 title, but does so friggin well. You're posse, for instance, is headed up by one Weinerboy and cut scenes sometimes use puppets or goofy retro animation.

The game can be played however you want. If you're content with sticking to the initial face of the mountain you can spend the rest of your gaming days there, or you can cruise through looking for the marked hotspots that trigger challenges, story lines or just havoc.
And when I say challenge don't think of it in the sense of top score or fastest time, it could be, for instance, most broken bones.
I shit you not.

This is one of the only games I've ever played that has been both made me laugh out loud, a lot, and been fun to play.

I love the fact that at any point I can hop off my board and get into a snowball fight with the people standing around or switch to one of the other modes of convenience (snowmobile, inner tuber, sled, hang glider) that are unlockable in the game.

In many ways, Amped 3 is the GTA of snow sports games but with sleds and snowball fights instead of cars and gun battles, And the gamespace is mammoth with seven resorts, which make the game three times larger than the first two combined.

You can even go into Park Builder mode and create your own snow park.
The graphics are superb and blend real world imagery with insane additions like throbbing rainbows, cartoon thunderclouds and 8-bit graphics.

Despite enjoying the game, it only really feels like half a step forward for the next-gen console. This is a fantastic game, but it feels like one you could play on a current gen system. Granted the graphics are much better, but that's about it.

I give Amped 3 three out of five stars.