Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders Review (theSwoderman)
Slightly ranty positive review incoming. This is all based on solo play - I played a bit of multiplayer racing in the demo but nothing in the released game.
I like this game quite a bit, I have probably about 100 hours in Lonely Mountains Downhill across steam and playstation and was greatly anticipating this sequel. I think skiing is a natural evolution on the lonely mountains formula and I have zero complaints about its implementation in this game. The controls feel smooth and natural, the slops are all incredibly well designed and beautifully decorated, and the addition of multiplayer + tricks adds a lot of fun moments to the game.
I really just have 1 complaint which I never thought I would have about a Lonely Mountains game. It's... it's just way too easy. I don't mean that the slopes are too easy to navigate, but just that the challenges which the game presents you with don't provide much challenge. I would consider myself a strong player but not an incredible player and I full cleared all challenges on my first try on at least 75% of the slopes, and I think there was only one that took me more than 2 attempts. It took me under 5 hours to complete all the content in the game. There might actually not have been any. I don't think there is a single trail I could say that about in Downhill (partially because the game requires you to play each trail many times just to unlock its challenges, I'm not sure that system needs to return though).
Lonely Mountains Downhill has a challenge on every single trail to complete it at night with only a headlamp with no checkpoints. There is nothing that even comes close to that in Snow Riders. There is a "zen mode" which doesn't contain checkpoints except for... you can create your own checkpoints. This is great for practicing lines to get better times except the game doesn't really present much reason for you to get better times. I might try to get slightly better leaderboard times if i'm bored with other games but that isn't a super motivating system to me. I could play multiplayer but I don't have friends who have the game and queuing in with randoms of random ability levels doesn't sound all that enjoyable either.
I'm really itching for the game to give me further challenges. The base game that they have really doesn't need much adjustment, just give me more times to beat with low deaths, I want a reason to develop mastery of these slopes to the same extent that Downhill challenged me to master those trails.