Gameplay
Take every other “extreme” racing game you’ve seen, now change the vehicles to snowmobiles. Now, suck all the life out of that game, and you’ve got this game. Whiteout is gameplay at its simplest, which is probably why it’s so insanely dull.

First off, you pick your rider. If you’ve played SSX Tricky for PS2 or Xbox, you’ll recognize these screens. It’s almost a direct copy of the player selection screen, only the characters don’t have half the charm or charisma of Tricky’s team of riders. And when you pick a player, you get a nice inane “I’ll try my best” type of comment from your rider. While the riders are supposed to have varied skills, I didn’t notice it since the game itself is so easy.

The variety of snowmobiles (sleds) is nice, and while some are significantly better than others, you won’t really notice much of a difference between 75% of them. Maybe a touch more speed or acceleration, but the handling is almost always the same.

Once you have your rider and sled, it’s time to learn the controls. This game has no training mode, and really doesn’t need one since the controls are so basic. You’ve got the gas, the brake, steering, nitro, and “trick” buttons. The stick handles the steering, which allows you to pull normal, shallow turns, or sink deep into soft snow for a deeper more controlled turn.

When racing, you would think that a good fast line would keep you in the lead, but this just isn’t the case. The AI always knows where the hidden routes are and tends to get ahead of you frequently using these cheap shortcuts. Once you find the shortcuts, and of course you will, you’ll at least be able to keep up with the AI, but I found it weak that you absolutely must take shortcuts to win. Forget skill, you can slop that sled all over the track, just find the hidden areas and you’ll win no matter how poorly you race.  Another trick for beating the AI riders is to frequently cut corners, which in my book is racing at its lamest, yet in later levels, poor sportsmanship is the way to win in Whiteout.

Along with simply racing around the tracks, your rider can perform aerial stunts off of the multitude of massive jumps dotting the track. Once you’re in the air, you use combinations of button presses and stick moves to perform a trick. While the simple tricks use just a button and a simple directional shift, the point-earning tricks require you be a master of multiple button stick-twisting mayhem. If you’re a button masher, you’ll pull off some tricks, but if you’re a finesse player, you’ll just tire of the mish-mash button combos pretty quickly.

Tricks earn you “props”, which are part of a multiplier used by the game to figure out how much money you earn during a race. The bigger and better the trick, the more props you can earn. Jumping across large gaps, breaking junk piles, and simply running into prop tokens will earn you more props, which you’re going to need if you want enough money to upgrade your sled after a few races.

Graphics
The graphics in Whiteout are generally pretty good but not terribly remarkable. While the characters themselves aren’t all that impressive, the tracks really shine. I was particularly pleased to see a very realistic snowstorm appear during racing where the snow actually moved around when the wind started blowing. The sleds and riders are bright and colorful, but as I’ve mentioned, are pretty unremarkable. There’s very little “wow!” factor to the graphics in Whiteout.

Soundtrack
Enough! If I hear the same alt-metal soundtrack again I’m going to go on some sort of anti-game rampage. From what I could tell, each race arena only has one musical track assigned to it, which plays in an endless, headache-inducing loop. I actually liked some of the songs within the soundtrack, but after hearing them in ad-infinitum, I couldn’t take it any more.

The game sounds themselves are standard fare, with whining engines and crashing snowmobiles making up 99% of the effects. There is some voice work provided by the commentators, but you’ll quickly find yourself silencing those guys with their “whew…did you just fart” commentary. Even if you enjoy a little childish banter on occasion in your videogames, this commentary will get old quickly. I counted about 20 different comments total from the announcers, and those 20 comments will get infuriating quickly.

Replayability
If you can stay awake long enough to finish Whiteout, you won’t bother playing it again. This game will quickly make its way back from whence you purchased it.

Overall, Whiteout is a disappointing experience. It starts out feeling like a good game, but as you continue playing it, you find it’s a shallow design with little, if anything, that stands out. To describe Whiteout as bland is to be kind. It’s a cool idea with all the fun sucked right out of it.

Screenshots available at the Whiteout homepage