Shredders

If you’re a snowboarding fan, there’s a good chance you’ll get some hours of quality entertainment out of Shredders, especially if you manage to master its trick system. That’s a pretty big if though, as there’s some frustration involved. Still, available at a budget price, and included in Game Pass, it’s a decent new addition to a genre that’s pretty underrepresented these days, and with a low barrier to entry. It’s just a shame it isn’t a little more polished, and welcoming.

A love letter to the world of snowboarding, Shredders is a passion project that mostly sticks the landing.

Shredders is a breath of chilly mountain air in the face of snowboarding fans everywhere. If you miss the genre's heyday of Cool Boarders, 1080 Snowboarding, and Amped, then it's definitely time to strap on a new pair of digital bindings.

Technically, the game does look the part, with solid graphics especially on Xbox Series X where the game was tested, albeit there’s noticeable and rather annoying framerate drops whenever the game loads new players into our session. In the end, I find myself having a good time with Shredders, but there’s still plenty to iron out in its design before it has the chance to be remembered as one of the great snowboarding titles. Its inclusion in Game Pass both on Xbox and PC makes it easy enough to drop in and out as various updates hit, and I’m curious to see where the game will ultimately land.

Shredders, in an analogous sense, is more Session than it is Skate. It’s hard to see the odd story resonating with anybody, the generously proportioned terrains are sparsely populated and, as a package, it feels feature-poor. This is all despite it feeling super confident in its controls and systems. It’s a small slam from which the developer can dust themselves off, but it’s far from a wipeout.

Snowboarding has got a bit of a bad rep in the gaming world (unless you count the spectacular Sonic Riders back in 2006!). A realistic sim has been attempted in the past with titles like Shaun White Snowboarding, SSX, and even the recent Steep. While these have been decent attempts, they come with the kind of bells and whistles that Shredders deliberately forgoes, instead opting to boil the experience down to the core of what makes snowboarding fun. Utilising basic controls that allow you to ...

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Needlessly complex controls dragging down a robust system, a storyline uninterested in upping the ante to wacky hijinks or otherwise, and a world that fails to acknowledge your existence, Shredders performs self-sabotage by seemingly not performing at all.