Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders Review

Lonely Mountains: Downhill was a one of my early reviews here at the Tavern, and while it had its issues I found it to be a fun, challenging game to while away a few evenings. So when Snow Riders was announced – this time taking the bikes away in favour of skis – I knew I had to check it out. I’ve spent a few evenings now playing it and, while there’s still hints of the issues I had with Downhill, overall it feels like a far more fluid and polished experience. 

The premise for Snow Riders remains the same; start at the top of a huge mountain and work our way down through several checkpoints as fast (and safely) as possible. Along the way there are a plethora of shortcuts and alternate routes to find, all there for us to explore as best we can within our abilities.

Initially, the going is pleasant. The same flat shaded polygons return, and there’s a pleasingly simple charm to the aesthetic all round. The snow is a clear standout here, glistening in the sun and carved up as our rider ploughs through it in some super satisfying ways. The audio for this is especially great, the crunch of the snow never getting old no matter how many times we cut through it.

Those challenges in the top left keep us in the competitive mindset, and will warn us when we’re close to failing

And we will cut through it multiple times. Downhill wasted no time in getting our rage on, and Snow Riders is cut from the same cloth. If you’ve played Downhill or indeed any of the Trials games, you’ll already know that feeling; one of pure bliss when a run  is going just right that turns to rage as we wipe out inches from the end, that in turn becomes the glorious ‘one more go’ mindset that sees us up until gone midnight because this will the be the one goddamnit

Snow Riders keeps the forced camera perspective, swinging about to give us views between expanse and wide and holyfuckIhavenoideawhatscomingup. The latter usually as we’re careening down a stretch at maximum speed.

Early courses are more lenient with this, with few breakneck sections or slower, more intricate turns. By the time we get to the last mountain however, we’re all but teetering on the edge of doom the entire way down. 

And it’s exhilarating.

While the aim in naturally to go down, we do have a few moves to help us out. Braking is effective but risky on corners or steep slopes, and crouching removes some turning ability for sheer speed. Holding RT lets us use the ski poles to push us along but are useless once we get a move on. And so the entire way down we’re constantly flicking back and forth between these options, braking to fling into a tight turn followed by a crouch to get enough speed to skim across the top of some water or over a jump. Holding RT in the air lets us fall to the earth faster, but sometimes we’ll need the extra height by letting the button go, although it can be tricky to judge. 

Again, when a run is going right it’s brilliant fun to carve the snow up, weaving between rocks and trees, and hitting the checkpoints with a sigh of relief as well as anticipation as to what’s to come. Each level has three challenges to beat; finish under a certain time or certain amount of crashes, and an extra challenge with tougher limits on both. Clearing all three on each run is tough but the only way to unlock new gear and runs. Beat the hardest challenge and we unlock a new Black trail (the regular ones are the Blue trails) which is an even tougher course with tougher time limits. In total, we have 12 levels, each with two runs, and I’ll be damned if I’ll ever be good enough to hit the latter Black levels (but you never know).

There are some spectacular views to be had, but scant time to actually appreciate them. More often, we need to scan ahead for shortcuts and alternate routes

Multiplayer features this time round, with online races and co-op exploration. We haven’t had much luck finding random games to play with so far unfortunately, with either lobbies taking too long to fill or hosts quitting before a race has ended, but with a group of buddies this side of Snow Riders could be a good laugh.

As we mentioned up top though, a few of Downhill’s foibles return albeit in lessened form. That fixed camera is tightly controlled by the game, but there have been a few occasions where it was occluded by scenery that meant we literally couldn’t see where we were going. Once or twice we suspect this was the idea, but others felt less intentional.

The physics are also still prone to the odd random outburst too. One course we were on had a jump that we nailed three times in a row that let us skip a part of the track, but every subsequent attempt saw us fail miserably with no obvious reason why. And we fell foul multiple times by our rider being launched in the air off of seemingly nothing. The fixed camera is no doubt not helping here, probably obscuring jumps or bumps sometimes. It’s nowhere near as big an issue as we remember in Downhill (and it wasn’t a huge deal there either tbh) but there were definitely a few runs ruined by this all the same.
But why let a couple of issues get in the way of good time, especially when they’re far rarer this time around. We’ve had a great time playing Snow Riders this weekend, and intend on doing so for a while yet as we try to beat as many of the extra courses and challenges as we can. And when it all gets too much we can always load up Zen mode, where we get to explore the mountains at our leisure with no time limits or restrictions.

Conclusion

Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders is a brilliant follow-up to Downhill, refining the flow of the gameplay and ironing out most of the issues we had with that game. A perfect blend of chill and rage inducing gaming that we can’t seem to put down.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.

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Good
  • Satisfying gameplay
  • Lots of challenges to undertake
  • Multiplayer is a neat touch (even if we've not had much luck with it thus far)
Bad
  • Occasional scenery blocking views
  • Physics can have a few wobbly moments
8.9
Great
Written by
I've been gaming since Spy vs Spy on the Master System, growing up as a Sega kid before realising the joy of multi-platform gaming. These days I can mostly be found on smaller indie titles, the occasional big RPG and doing poorly at Rainbow Six: Siege. Gamertag: Enaksan

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