First Encounter:

Dog and Poser Show

By Jason Carl

You know you've always wanted to live the life of the professional shredder, and now you can! Amped 2 isn't about just beating the clock or working on your high score—though you can do that, too—it's about becoming the shred star you've always wanted to be. Take charge of your emerging career as you pursue fame and glory as a top-ranked dog!

The first step is choosing a boarder. You can be any one of 14 top snowboarding competitors, but it's more fun to create your own persona. The game doesn't miss a detail, allowing you to select the exact gear and look you want for your personality, including eyewear, gloves, hat, pants, top, skates, hairstyle, and of course (duh!) your board. Customize your rider and grab some powder.

Get Three Good Ollies, Dog!
First time on a stick? Don't know an ollie from a stalefish? No problem—Amped 2 has you covered with an exceptionally helpful series of tutorials. You'll pack into snow banks and bail repeatedly at first, but within half an hour, you'll be getting good ollies, riding halfpipes, showing off your styley grabs, and sketching like a pro. There's also voiceover and text help in case you need more details about a game function or trick. Repeat the tutorials as many times as necessary to get comfortable with your board and master the tricks, then launch your career.

Think Fluid Motion
The key to career success is managing your media exposure. When competing in Media Challenges, time your style tricks so they're captured on film by the floating media icons. When you pass near a camera, it's your time to shine: The more tricks you pull and the sicker they are, the higher your bonus score. After you complete a challenge, review the film footage of your run with Replay Theater, the powerful built-in media player that lets you check every critical detail of your performance and record the segments that best reflect your skills. Build a portfolio of photos, photo montages, and demo reels. Your high point scores and cool portfolio can catapult you higher up the rankings, and as your fame grows, your sponsors lavish you with new boards and gear—you can even earn product endorsements that appear on mountainside banners!

Okay, Shred Star …
But as much fun as it is to build your boarding career, the game's true power lies in the combination of its visual achievements and trick options. The wide-open mountain vistas are rendered with jaw-dropping realism. The Freeride option lets you carve your path down multiple runs at no less than 14 different world-class snowparks, each designed by world-famous terrain engineer Chris "Gunny" Gunnarson. The runs are situated on different continents, adding some globe-trotting fun to your huckfest, and include Mt. Hood, Oregon; Mt. Buller, Australia; and Laax, Switzerland. Each drop point features a variety of paths to the bottom, filled with jumps, rails, trickable objects, and halfpipes to make every run a pulse-pounding achievement.

Don't Jerk the Thumbstick, Sparky
Amped 2's trick library is nothing short of amazing. There's a full set of styled-out rails that will leave you racing back to your drop points just to enjoy the sheer fun of racing for the bottom again. All six of the classic grabs—from nose to indy—are available, and you can do complete spins and flips with surprising ease. But best of all is "Butter," the heart of a new system that lets you link tricks together to create combos. A combo is a trick from one category followed immediately by a trick from another different category. Combos give you point multipliers that greatly increase your score, and your fans will go wild when you ollie, follow it with a complete backward flip, and bring it all home with a melon grab. The more stylish your combos, the better!

Are You a Dog or a Poser?
To the victor go the bragging rights in the Amped 2 multiplayer mode. You'll find an impressive variety of competitive challenges to sate your multiplayer appetite. And, with the advent of Xbox Live, you'll take your career to a whole new level, comparing your stats, ratings, and rankings in the global arena. Then, when you thought your stick career couldn't possibly get any hotter, challenge boarders from around the world to find out, once and for all, who is the King of the Mountain.