The second snowboarding game to grace the PS2 is ESPN's X Winter Games but unlike SSX, this game is terrifyingly realistic. Before you finish reading, you'll know whether that is a good or a bad thing. This game comes packed to the rafters with just about every kind of game mode and options a die-hard snowboarding fan could ever want but unfortunately there are some flaws that keep it from achieving greatness.

Gameplay
The first thing I noticed about this game was the sheer number of game modes. There are three main choices; X Games, Snowboarder mode and Session mode. In X Games mode players compete in for Gold, Silver and Bronze prize in Super Pipe, Big Air and Slope events. Session mode is for multiplayer games between two people simultaneously or for three to five players taking turns. There is also a movie area where you can view video clips of real snowboarders pulling off some sick tricks.
The real heart of the game however lies in the Snowboarder mode. Here you create a boarder from scratch by giving him a name, setting up his/her equipment and choosing from a limited supply of bodies and head templates. It was strange to see that even the female templates looked like males! Oh well, I guess we'll just have to use our imagination. Once a boarder has been created you can proceed to a "lounge" which is nothing more than a room with a bunch of stick figures (no joke) waving their arms up and down. This is the ingenious interface, which you must deal with to access the various parts of snowboarder mode. Although the interface leaves much to be desired, the plethora of things to do here is amazing. Players can enter competitions, do heli-boarding, buy lift passes to access more events, adjust board settings, buy new equipment with the money they earn and do film shoots. From time to time sponsors will approach you with a deal and ask you to buy only their equipment. There is a huge amount of equipment and brand names to choose from Airwalk to Burton all the big names are there. Items you can purchase include snowboards, clothing, boots, and goggles you name it. There is no denying there is a ton of stuff in this game to do!
Now getting down to the actual gameplay I have a major problem with. Any of you who have played SSX and then play ESPN X Games will immediately feel that it feels clunky and unresponsive. That's realism folks and the developers have made this painfully clear. The analog stick is used to steer your boarder but if you want to carve an edge and be able to turn better you need to hold the circle button down while turning. If you don't, then it will be hard to turn and you will slide forward rather than go in the direction you intend. Another realistic element in the game that becomes frustrating is that when you wipe out you loose all momentum. This is a big problem when you are competing for points in a pipe and have a time limit as it will take forever to build speed again and when you finally do get enough speed to do more tricks, the run is almost over! Sure it's realistic but as gamers do we really need to go through all that? It would be much more fun to be given a little boost when we fall so we can get back into the game and not be fumbling all over the place. By the way, your board is very loose when it's moving at slow speeds and it's really hard to turn the thing, which further adds to the frustration.
The trick system is pretty good and isn't very complicated. Pressing the R1 and circle, x, square, or triangle buttons performs different grabs. There is a few other button combinations that do other tricks as well so experimentation is encouraged. I particularly like how flipping and grabs were integrated into the game. To spin or flip you just move the analog stick in the desired direction and do a grab. But it is easier said than done. Once you commit to a flip or a spin, depending on how fast you did that move determines how fast you go. It is possible to slow your rotation a little but you cannot stop it in mid air so the suspense of "am I gonna pull it off" comes into play because you must try and anticipate when you will be in the proper orientation with the board beneath you to land. It isn't done automatically for you; it's up to you to land the sucker. It's very hard at first but with a lot of practice, the tricks start to pay off.
Aside from a nice trick system, other gameplay physics seem rather inconsistent. The manner in which your board handles is real enough but sometimes when you land on rocky outcroppings, the board seems to stick to it. When you slide off of a rocky face back onto the snow the chance of falling seems to be completely random. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. Just leave it up to the quirky AI to decide your fate. The same is true when competing against other boarders, if you are mixed up in the pack you may get knocked flat on your back and stop dead in your tracks without even sliding! Other times you can go straight through them unscathed. Yet another inconsistency is how much airtime you have. Once you do get up to speed in a pipe, the amount of airtime you can get is highly exaggerated. It's as if the game goes into slow-mo for the time being. This does give you more time to do tricks but if they were lenient with this why do they punish you for falling? It appears that even the developers did not know whether to ease up on the realism and in some cases they have but this only adds to the annoyance of the whole "Xtreme" realism problem.
The only people that would truly appreciated ESPN Winter Game's simulation style gameplay would be actual snowboarders who know what to expect. But for everyone else, the game will be frustrating and has a very steep learning curve. One trait that a game should always have is good balance. Unfortunately, due to the fact that the realism gets in the way of the fun, this game is somewhat unbalanced.

Graphics
Don't expect anything spectacular with the visuals in ESPN Winter Games. The graphics are more less what you would expect from a 1st generation PS2 title. The textures could use more detail, especially for the snowboarders. Their clothing looks too clumpy and stiff instead of looking looser. The animations are quite realistic and they look very accurate to real-life when performing tricks. Unfortunately they don't look as loose as the character models in SSX but they do have clothing that flaps in the wind, the problem is that the effect isn't very convincing.
The ski slops and various other locals in the game look pretty good. The snow looks right and depending on the time of day, the lighting changes the reflections on the environment. Some of the weather effects however don't look so hot. When it is snowing it looks more like a dense fog laid over the terrain which can seriously limit your visibility to the point of almost not being able to distinguish where there is a turn up ahead or where a drop off starts. The reason for this seems to be from the sky textures being almost the same color as the snow in cloudy weather.
For some strange reason the X Games mode seems to have better-looking graphics than in Snowboarder mode! Maybe they were only able to tweak part of the game before it was to be released? Aside from the overall, bland visuals the game does maintain a fast and constant framerate. What would have made ESPN Winter Games look great would be to run it at a higher resolution or improve texture detail, but don't get me wrong, there is nothing really ugly about this game.

Sound
The soundtrack is typical of what you would expect from an Xtreme sports game. You've got your punk and hard rock tunes from the likes of Goldfinger, Pepper, Primer 55, etc. It suits the game very well and is probably just as good as popping in your own CD while you play. But I have to say the menu music can get mighty annoying after a short time.
Again, like the graphics, there is nothing special that make the sound effects stand out. All the familiar sounds are here like the sound of your board cutting through the snow, the whale of the wind rushing by and of course the loud smack of bodies crashing hard into the snow. Compared to SSX though, ESPN Winter Games just doesn't have as crisp and clear of a sound as that game has.

Value
As I've said before, this is a very complete and in-depth snowboarding game that simulates all the career events that a real snowboarder would go through and as such, this game can result in a rewarding experience provided that you can stick with it long enough. If you are a die-hard snowboarding fan than this game might make a good purchase but for the casual fan or anyone else I'd advice them to stay away. If anything rent it first but it really takes a while to get into the game so it doesn't necessarily make a good rental because first impressions leave much to be desired.

In the end, ESPN has created an extremely realistic snowboarding game that conflicts with the real reason we play gamesto have fun! But that doesn't mean that this game can't be rewarding for some. Those who do acquire the taste may find themselves playing for a long time.