So due to the travesty I had to play yesterday, today I decided to see if the genre of mini flash snowboarding games could save itself from totally flaming... AND IT DID! Coming in at almost 14 Million Plays on one site alone, we bring you: Extreme Heli Boarding!

I was so relieved when I played this game after the first 30 seconds.

So, so so relieved. This game is absolutely fantastic! It encompasses all the elements that make a good flash game good, and it is HIGHLY addictive. Nearly every comment about this game is calling it addictive and fun to constantly play.

Users are in control of a snowboarder that dropped out of a helicopter onto a frigged mountain top. Your goal is to rack up point by collecting stars and pulling out sick aerial maneuvers. Also your run has a limited time, which can be increased by collecting the other kind of star and thus extending your run.

Avoiding wild animals, and downed logs are also important as these will detract from the amount of time when you wipe out. Runs being with only 30 seconds on the clock.

Now the actual run appears to be built from pre-designed segments of terrain which are supposed to fit together to create a randomly generated mountain. Now while for the most part this does work, sometimes you are given very odd scenarios with logs or animals that are impossible to get around... Luckily the unique physics engine is there to save the day, and let us jump REALLY high... oh 'space' is jump.

To be quite frank, the physics are manageable, and while CLEARLY not perfect... I mean you just hold the direction you want to g, Up is forward Down is reverse; reverse on a snowboard... it doesn't really matter, the game is fun as hell. And these tricks you pull out, guess what, no silly button mashing or trying to remember long combinations... nope just press the tilt buttons, do a full rotation and collect the points. Add more spins into a single air time and increase the points.

A scoring system that makes sense. Also, perfect landings will double whatever score you were going to get, encouraging you to not over rotate but instead be like an Olympic gymnast... Stick That Landing!

The music in this title really is catchy, there is no way to disable it but I actually enjoyed it... Probably because the games sound track was sampled by programmer, Martijn Kunst from the NES title 'California Games'.

A few things I would have wanted would have been a simple, restart level option, but instead you have to find your way back to the main menu and then start a new game... I am sure this feature would have been easy enough to do, and save end users ALOT of hassle. However I'm only being that critical of a small function because everything else about it really is good.

I Highly recommend playing this game... and not the other snowboarding one.

Rating:

Longevity: 3.5/5
Interface: 4.0/5
Addictiveness: 4.5/5
Sound: 4.0/5
Simplicity: 4.0/5

Overall: 4.0/5

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