I tried so hard to think of a reason not to give Amped 3 a 10. I know I'm guilty on occasion of leaning towards the generous side, although I do feel that it a game is truly outstanding and highly playable then it deserves full marks. The thing is, I've already given 10s in my first two Xbox 360 reviews of Perfect Dark Zero and Kameo: Elements Of Power, plus the Xbox 360 itself naturally scored 10s across the board. You'll all think I've lost the plot and kicked into generosity overdrive, but I can assure you, I really haven't, because Amped 3 is a fantastically entertaining and enjoyable game that deserves its 10 every much as those bigger launch titles.

The story and presentation for Amped 3 is the funniest, most tripped out, wacky and bizarre thing you have ever seen! I kid you not, this game redefines kookyness - whatever these guys were on when they put this game together, I want some! The story begins when you hook up with your crew, a very likeable gang of misfits who've banded together to save up enough cash to visit exotic Chile. The story twists and turns in all kinds of truly madcap ways, and to attempt to explain it would be to make it sound lame. However, it's the combination of the quirky characterisations, incredibly funny dialogue and voiceovers, and hilarious presentation that really makes every cut scene a true joy. The amount of hard work and effort that's gone into the cut scenes is amazing - because while there are scenes that use the graphics engine and characters, most of them are presented in an array of different and unique fashions.

Each chapter is introduced with a very retro style game, with Zelda-esque music and delightfully funny happenings on screen as your hero races around a blocky landscape, taking on suitably strange baddies. Then there's Weiner Dog's custom built course, introduced with a tacky voiceover and motion captured using lame looking action figures of the characters! Or how about Sebastian's freaky scribbling in his notepad that's just chock full of cool drawings of the monsters, gods and demons that litter the mountainside, which he shows you as he takes you through the art of style spins and flips, where your awesomeness shows, time slows and there's nothing but you and the wind whistling past your ears. Righteous, dude. Then there's the kung fu anime style saga when these guys pick on Weiner Boy and you have to avenge him. And the scrapbook storytelling of your strange would-be girlfriend. And the corporate executive who's a pig's head platter on a giant spring that sits behind cardboard cut outs of suits and hands you dangerous assignments. And Ski Patrol, the Russian game show complete with barbed wire fences and an entire audience made out of hand puppets (by this I mean actual hands with eyes and hair stuck on them, using the thumb to form a mouth!) And it gets stranger than that, believe me!!

So there you have it - completely redefining 'leftfield', the story and presentation of Amped 3 comes from nowhere to make a fantastically fresh and funny impression. Moving onto the actual gameplay, and Amped 3 is jam packed with things to do - there are over one thousand challenges throughout the game (yes, I kid you not!) of all shapes and sizes, set across seven real-life mountains, each with several sprawling areas to them, with many rails, ramps and obstacles laid out in increasingly fiendish layouts that will challenge you more and more as you progress.

The variety to the challenges, which are gradually unlocked as you earn Respect and Coin, which you get from, um, completing challenges, is very impressive. The Media Callouts return and they're dotted all over the mountain - each photographer likes something in particular, be it flips, spins, aerials, grabs, rails or whatever, and you view yourself through the video camera (it's all gone digital video now, doncha know!) and you must hit certain score points by pulling off stylish combos from a single jump, to earn either bronze, silver or gold (you get all three if you hit gold first time, as with every challenge that's graded).

Then there are the challenges of all shapes and sizes. Snow Quest, sponsored by a retro, blocky elf, challenges you to hit a set score within a time limit, as you speed down the mountain combining butters, jumps, aerials, grabs and grinds to rack up points. Win the challenge and get told, "Thou art a stud!" Magic Circles is one of the nastiest of all; you must go through a series of circles, without missing any, and pull enough combos to hit the required score as you go, and their placement gets increasingly tricky, so these can be incredibly frustrating (especially with the cheesy Seventies guy who laughs at you when you fail!) but also very satisfying to complete.

The funniest challenge is easily Sled Trauma. You are put on an unstable sled, anything from a dish or inflatable banana to a mattress, armchair or even a portaloo, then you have to get up speed while balancing, before launching yourself up a ramp and releasing the sled, with the idea being to hurt yourself as much as possible on landing! This really is so much fun, as your character eeks and oos down the mountain, smacking into rocks and trees for extra damage, tumbling and rolling down the hill until you finally hit an even area and come to a halt.

Kitty Cleanup sees you collecting a trail of kitty glitter, which is a very precise and tricky task, although you can miss as many as you like, making it not as tough as Magic Circles. Sellout Challenge has you performing the same type of trick until you get the thumbs up bar filled (kiss butt, win stuff), Samurai Slalom is a race against the clock as you speed through gates to add time to the countdown, Mobilize is the same thing but on a snowmobile, while Lords of the Board is all about following a pro and scoring higher than he or she does by tricking in the same spots. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it gives you some idea of the variety on offer.

As well as all these, there are story challenges that you can take on whenever you want to progress the story, which unlocks new mountains and new areas within a mountain. These can be a combination of the types of challenge mentioned above, or something else entirely, like boarding through an obstacle course, tailing some riders to see where they're going or even photograph them in the act of falling over embarrassingly, hang gliding through rings, or even riding a snowmobile off a jump and through the gaps in two trams that are passing each other!! Yes, it really does get insane! Plus, there are a number of people on each slope (often a hundred or more) for you to impress - trick enough to go into awesome mode, then trick some more while they're watching you to make them stoked.

Graphically, Amped 3 is wonderful and most definitely next generation. While there's only so much you can do with snowy mountainsides, everything is highly detailed, especially the many trees and obstacles, while the backdrops are impressive and the skies gorgeous. By far the best aspect is the riders themselves, though. Using a very slight caricature style, the animation is smooth and realistic, while the faces are highly detailed and the textures on the clothing looks photo-realistic in a lot of cases - you can't quite believe it when you first see it. The mountains are full of people snowboarding, sitting around watching, having snowball fights, taking pictures… and every one of them looks great.

On the subject of looking great, the rider customisation is excellent - there aren't that many basic face types to choose from, but pick one you like and then select from a range of eyewear, hats, hairstyles, accessories and facial hair (for the guys!) All this can be changed at any time, even how your rider looks. Body type allows you to be buff, bloated or anything in between, although sadly the body shape isn't that realistic and the arm joints have that plastic action figure look, which is a real shame. Still, you'll be covering up (you can go topless with a pair of super-tight 70's style shorts, but wouldn't you be a bit chilly?!) with a range of cool gear and you can put tattoos on your body, before you add the tops, pants (that's trousers for us Brits!) and footwear. You can also choose from a range of boards and even pick your awesomeness style (the graphics that flash up around your rider when you do something awesome) and dialogue, cheeky or chilled, which affects the cut scene conversations. There's a fair range of clothing when you begin, with loads and loads to unlock as you progress.

The control system is very easy to pick up and you'll be putting sick combos together in no time - when in the air you can spin and flip, while performing a series of grabs, and you can either do it fast for combo points or with style for that slow motion effect, which sees your total soaring into orbit. Moving the left thumbstick up and down rapidly causes you to butter, a balancing move as you board down the mountain, which you can use to link air combos and rail grinds together, but you'll have to be careful, as once into a butter (or on a rail) you need to skilfully move the left thumbstick either up and down (for butters) or left and right (for grinds) to keep your balance. The way you do this is very intuitive and well put together, while landings are on the forgiving side and it doesn't really matter which way your board is pointing and if you're midway in a spin or not; as long as it's upright, you'll land fine.

As well as boarding, at any time you can summon up a snowmobile, for riding down the mountainside, or even back up it, complete with its own series of tricks and even flips you can pull if you get enough air from a jump. And you can also summon up a sled, which is nicely unstable (you use the triggers to keep your balance) if you fancy doing yourself a bit of damage and having a good tumble on your way to the next challenge. Sweet!

All of this is accompanied by some great sound effects. Again, there's not that much to effects for a snowboarding game - grinding on rails and rocks, swishing through the snow, and the voices of nearby people. But there's much more to it here - every challenge is presented in a unique fashion, complete with comical and often retro sound effects, collecting kitty glitter, going through time gates and magic circles, crashing down the mountain, the snowmobile engine - everything sounds just right, while the voice acting for all the characters is perfectly delivered and very funny throughout the game. But best of all, as seems to be the trend with 360 games, is the music - over 300 tracks (I know, it's insanity!) from a range of genres, everything from rock and punk to hip hop and indie, there's something here for everyone's tastes and you can deactivate any labels or artists you're not keen on. There's even some wonderfully cheesy elevator musak for the menu, which I've been listening to on my headphones while writing this review, and it's totally brilliant - comical music that's right up my alley!

With the inclusion of leaderboards for every single challenge in the game, as well as 15 tough game achievements to complete, the already high lifespan goes through the roof - there's so much to do and so much to unlock, even without these added online incentives (and those top scores are so ridiculously big it'll take some doing to beat them!) The crying shame here, however, and the reason I'm knocking a point off the lifespan, is that there's no simultaneous online play! Gutted! The fun that could've been had riding down the hill with your mates, while player spectators attempt to pelt you with snowballs! There's a couple of challenges that require two players, and that's it. This really is a huge omission, and while I'm willing to overlook it because the rest of the game is so damn awesome, it's still a crime that there isn't a proper multiplayer mode to take online. The addition of a park builder does help a little, although it's frustratingly limited at first and doesn't encourage you to get into it and unlock all the good stuff to begin being able to put proper courses together. Now, for maximum effect, read the final paragraph out loud, in a surfer dude voice…

Despite the heinous lack of online play, Amped 3 is, like, a cross between the meditation of a Buddhist monk and the acid flashback of a Sixties hipster, dude. The storyline and presentation are totally righteous, the gameplay is both challenging and calming, like Tai-Chi, and dude, the graphics, like, totally rock! And check out all those fresh tunes - it just doesn't get any sicker than this! If Bill & Ted had a 360, this'd totally be their most bodaciously favourite game. It doesn't take Zen-like wisdom to understand that the path to enlightenment is a snowy one that leads down a mountainside, so, feel the flow and pick up Amped 3 - it'd be bad karma not to, dude!

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).