SSX is more than your average snowboarding game. Instead of focusing on one aspect, such as freestyle or racing, the game is made up of everything. Fast races, mass air, insane tricks and amazing slopes all add up to give you one enjoyable experience.
SSX hosts 8 original and innovative courses for you to carve up. Each course has its own unique style. The Elysium Alps features huge drop-offs and conveniently fallen trees for you to grind and use to your advantage. While over at the Tokyo Megaplex, a huge fan has been placed on the course, which you jump on and are taken to the top of the run, this is where you’ll get some massive trick combo’s.
The great thing about the courses is that they don't consist of you following a line all the way to the bottom of the slope. There are shortcuts hidden all over the place, which will both give you an advantage and a disadvantage, because your opponents may find them before you do.
An example of an excellent shortcut is at Snow Dream, Japan. A new player will come out of the corner and continue on to the next jump. But if you're smart, you’ll notice a small mound placed next to the barrier on the side of the track. If you manage to jump the barrier, dodge a few trees and find your way back onto the course, you’ll find yourself a long way in front of the pack.
SSX also features a set of damn cool characters. All up, there are 8 for you to choose from, featuring their own abilities and riding style. Here are just a couple of my favourites...
- Mac is a freestyle rider with stylish flare and a quiet confidence of riders twice his age.
- Kaori is a freestyle rider with a positive groove
- Jurgen is a weathered veteran of snowmobile and backcountry ski competitions. He is an established boarder the SSX scene.
- Zoe takes her winning ways from the pinnacle of the mountain biking scene into new territory...
You can improve your boarders’ skills by competing in the World Circuit. If you win a medal, you'll score points to build up the characters’ statistics with. You can tech 4 abilities; Edging, Speed, Stability and Tricks.
The tricks you can pull off in the game are great, because most of them are unrealistic. I highly doubt that today’s snowboarders would be able to grind down a fallen tree, leap off a cliff and then continue to pull a Misty 720 Swiss Cheese to a Late Gleefull Melancholy. This is one aspect of the game that makes it so enjoyable to play.
The game features a uniquely controlled trick system. In order to make your character do a grab in the air; you must use different combinations of the shoulder buttons. For example, for a mute grab, you may be pressing L1. And for a flying squirrel, you'll have to push down L2 and R2. It's a great system and really suits the style of gameplay.
It is disappointing to see that the game does have some frustrating bugs. There are glitches in the game engine where you'll slam into a chair-lift poll and will be re-spawned way back up the course, obviously costing you the race.
In other cases, you will take a chance by trying to leap over a couple of rocks; you may fall short and then get stuck in between them, disabling you for a few seconds. Although Select does act as a reset button, it’s still annoying.
Graphics wise, the game doesn't actually look too bad and still keeps up with today’s high standards. But, the snow doesn't get ripped up and sprayed around like it should. Anybody that hasn’t been snowboarding would probably tell me to stop whinging, but it would be nice to see loads of snow fly up when taking corners at high speeds.
Sadly, the game does have case of slowdown. When going straight through a snow machine, which is spraying fresh snow all over the track, the frame-rate will drop a little. But it’s nothing major and can be put up with.
SSX has a great Techno-Breakbeat soundtrack. The game has the amazing ability to alter the music depending on how well you are riding. You will pull a massive 900 Japan Air, slamming to the ground when you'll hear the DJ start scratching up the music. This also works the opposite way, wiping out will obviously cause the music to slow down.
But the sound isn't all great, the commentator that you can hear while racing yells things about how well you are boarding. Not only is his voice annoying, the things he says are stupid and get repetitive fast. It's nothing a switch in the options menu can't fix though.
In terms of Lifespan, this game should last you a while if you are into the genre. With the World Circuit and Showoff modes to complete, SSX is fairly long. But once you get to know the shortcuts off by heart, you'll be able to beat the computer boarders at the hardest difficulty every time. Another difficulty setting would have been a great idea for those advanced players.
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