"I totally feel like The Greatest American Hero right now!"

It's just before the holidays and I'm driving through sloppy Minnesota weather to visit Destineer. The publisher has a reputation for fast and cheap software, like Homie Rollerz and Summer Sports: Paradise Island. But it's aiming higher with a new snowboarding game for the Xbox 360 called Stoked. That's why I'm steering my car through ice and slush to Plymouth -- a suburb of Minneapolis. These guys are going up against Ubisoft's Shaun White Snowboarding -- and considering the chilly reception the redheaded boarder's game earned, there's an opportunity for Stoked to step in and show how it's done. There's nothing I like more than an underdog.

I meet Peter Anthony Chiodo (Destineer's director of product development) and Jeremy Zoss (the company's director of communications) for some hands-on time in a Destineer meeting room. They load up the build of the game that they just shipped out to Microsoft for certification. I'm handed a controller and set loose on the mountains. Chiodo begins describing the traits of the different hills to me. I go for the one with "flatter long runs and rail objects." Before I jump into the action, Chiodo is quick to point out the portion of the menu that shows the multi-day weather forecast.

Snow is game-changing in Stoked. A good fall can make areas that were once rocky and impassible totally rideable. Right after a good storm, "all the rail objects will have a big, huge pillow of snow on top of them." Take a spill and clumps of white stuff stick to your outfit, proof that you just bailed. Ride a line down the mountain and your tracks stick in the snow. "You can take multiple runs and you'll always see them," Chiodo tells me. There's value in being able to see where you've been, especially if there's a spot you want to try hitting again.

Apparently this guy never heard of Robert Frost.

I get the feeling that Stoked has hitched its wagon to the same horses as Skate -- a game that reacted to the over-the-top super-heroics of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series by getting more down-to-earth. The moment that fiberglass hits powder, I know the similarities are more than coincidental. Thumbsticks rule the trick set. A push and flick makes the rider ollie. Slowly tilt back to find the sweet spot, and you lean back into a "butter" -- the snowboarding equivalent of a skateboarding "manual." Still, there's a lot of instinct to unlearn after years of playing SSX -- where thoughtless button-mashing was rewarded with aerial pyrotechnics. No, you have to be more methodical when playing Stoked. You have to learn when to grab, when to wind up before a jump and when to realign yourself so you don't eat it when you land. Most importantly, you have to learn your moves.

"It drove me crazy, when we did the Amped games, that nobody ever learned the tricks," says Chiodo, a Microsoft veteran."I wanted people to get a sense of building up a vocabulary." A bunch of the early challenges I run across aim at just that. As I ride down the slope, I'm invited to try my hand at pulling a trick or beating a score on certain features. It takes me a while to get the timing down, but soon I nail a couple of the tasks -- though not before checking the trick book to refresh myself on the basics (like the vital detail that a 50-50 grind is the kind where the board is parallel to the rail).

"This picture is going to look so sweet on Facebook."

Here's how progression in Stoked works. Complete challenges and you earn "Fame Points" until new sets of challenges appear. Eventually you get sponsorships, participate in snowboarding events, and do photo shoots for magazines. Once you've got a sponsor, things start getting competitive. Parts of the mountain become "Brand Battlegrounds." If you're sponsored by Burton and score the best run in an area, that spot gets tagged with your name and your team. You own that spot on the leaderboard until riders representing another brand unseat you. Brand battlegrounds turn the sponsorships into a sort of ad hoc gaming clan. If you're organized, Burton riders can work together to own an entire mountain. Every Sunday those leaderboards get refreshed. So a massive score doesn't dominate the board forever.

"We didn't want to have anybody to be intimidated," Chiodo says. "We wanted to give everybody a chance to be the top dog." In that respect, Stoked isn't all that hardcore about forcing players to complete every challenge it dishes out. "You're not beholden to every little, teeny task and activity," Chiodo tells me. "We don't have a 'complete 100 percent of the events' Achievement," Zoss adds. "Our Achievements are really attainable. [They aren't] too easy, but we wanted people to enjoy the game."

Wardrobe provided by Botany 500.

Still, there are some in-game feats that can be owned forever. Later in my session, I find myself atop Fuji with its pink skies and sharp drop-offs. I note the Shinto gates standing out in the snow and Chiodo is reminded of a more permanent leaderboard in the game -- one that rewards exploration. Apparently every mountain in the game has one hidden spot. Find it first and sign the guestbook, and your Gamertag will sit permanently atop that particular high score chart. "Some require the helicopter," he says, "others require you to be a little bit creative with where you decide to ride."

That's the appeal of big, open sports games like Skate and Stoked. There's a certain satisfaction to be had between all the goals and points of interest. As I'm riding down the slope, I think aloud, "There's something satisfying about carving." Zoss agrees. "One of the things I like about this game is that you don't have to be doing any of the progression challenges to enjoy it. You can just ride around."

This preview is based on hands-on time with early code of the game.