Outspark

Project Powder, the online snowboarding sim, ended their closed beta test yesterday. They sent around a survey asking what we liked and didn’t like about the game. My likes: The game is fast, furious and fun. It is extremely deep and values skill and fast thinking, something alien to MMOs that try to level the playing field for everyone. Some races where decided in the last 0.05 seconds. Yes, the last five hundredth of a second. You have to juggle the positions of nearby players, the tricks you need to line up, the course itself, how to position for any short cuts, a whether to bump that curve for some quick air and maybe a speed burst on landing, or to just hunker down and stay in the groove. ...

New outfit :) And halfway through level 6. Experience is slowing down, and it seems that only finishing in first place really moves the experience bar much. The only way forward is to start using level 2+ tricks, which confer an experience bonus. And the only way to do THAT is to complete the level 2 licenses, which require doing a fast series of tricks and reaching the end of the course in 36 seconds. I haven’t managed to earn any level 2 tricks. Usually I am just a second or two behind. I need more speed. And to get THAT – I need to craft enhancements. ...

It looked like it might have been an MMO, and I wrote up a quick article thinking it might be, but Project Powder really isn’t. What it is, is a helluva fun online snowboarding sim with chat channels, guilds/clans/crews, levels, more tricks than you can handle, and an item shop. Here’s a really terrible video I took from one of my first runs through the game. Yeah, I don’t win and I fall a lot, but I was still learning, and this video covers the entire action, from the snowball-throwing lobby to the finish line. For some reason, Fraps didn’t catch the hp-hop soundtrack, so I replaced it with selections from the .hack//sign sound track, Ayreon, and Phish. Sorry, no ear-killing death metal. I can feel your disappointment from here. Also contributing to the terribleness of this video is the fact that it is squashed horribly. This was widescreen, hi-def and looked fine on my PS3 when I uploaded it, folks. ...