Practice makes clean landings
Infinite Air is a difficult game to learn. It took me about 4 hours to get a good grasp of the controls.
The game uses the triggers to preload rotations. Unlike other snowboarding games you can not slow down a quick rotation mid air so getting the correct preload is important. You do have the ability to cat twist and tweak your board to clean up a landing. Carving in this game is initially confusing with Carves, Butters and reverts all on the left stick. There is also an ollie system ripped straight from the skate series and to make it more confusing you can flick the left stick in a direction after an ollie to spin. Flicking the is used mostly for rails and jibs with the finer trigger controls for large jumps.
The difficulty of the game makes landing tricks extremely rewarding. Small tricks like a popping a 180 off of a butter and tweaking it mid air feels almost as fun as on the slope. I've even done some bonks of rocks and trees with the object reversing my rotation. This is a game that is difficult to master and more rewarding for it.
There is no real campaign mode or story. In it's place is only a short set of challenges that only unlock cosmetic items after completed. This game is not for the trophy hunter who wants a list of objectives to complete. With basically an unlimited amount of procedural mountains, and exploration is where enjoyment is found. There is also a really good mountain creation system. I haven't spend much time creating my own, but using the map browser I have played on many runs made by other players. Some of the best parks in the game have been made by players.
This game definetly has some rough edges, most notably with the visuals. The graphics are pleasant, but there is pop in when multiple lines are put into the snow over the top of each other and there are dips in the frame rate. There is multiplayer, but only 2 players can ride together. The game would also benifit from a better tutorial system and a story mode.
Overall Infinite Air is the best realistic snowboarding game I have played. It has actually unseated my previous favorite game Amped 2.