SSX on Tour: Part 1

For those of you that have dabbled with the SSX series can continue to the fourth paragraph. At this point, I would like to explain to the few that have missed out on the series just what SSX is all about.

SSX started as a simple but cleanly presented downhill snowboarding racer. Most races are downhill races and some events are based on points generated from tricks. The downhill races are perfected by those who studied each course and found the shortcuts. While the trick events consist of finding as many big air jumps in your run and pulling off insane flip grabs as you soar off a ramp or half-pipe.

Tracks are presented very cleanly and the character movements have always been smooth. Players have a choice of characters who each have there own personality. They make comments about the big moves they pull or wipeouts they take. They also make cracks and slams toward other racers on the corse as they race close to each other.

The reason I want to explain SSX’s history is to tell where I’m coming from and why I expect the new edition to better than the previous. Over the series you had SSX, SSX Tricky, SSX 3, and last installment SSX 3. SSX 3 took the series to another level, allowing somewhat of a freeroam down the mountain n a Conquer the Mountain mode, which is like a career mode. Every event would win you money to purchase attributes, boards, clothing, and a list of extras. If you place well in an event you received a special article of clothing specific for that character. There are three peaks to the mountain and the difficulty rises as you continue up the mountain. Each peak has race, freestyle, and freerun modes. To master a peak you must win all of the races and freestyle events on it. And in freerun you must find all of the collectables (pretty, six foot tall snowflakes) and complete the Big Challenges. It had great replay value because you could build up each characters abilities and obtain all of the special clothing options. Bottom line: SSX 3 is a must own and a "top-20-of-all-time" game.

Okay, with that out of the way, lets get to the game you’re here for. First, when the game first came out it was at $39.99 and that scared me a little. I was worried about it being a cheaply put together game. You look at the box and it doesn’t impress you too much visually either. You drop it in the tray, slide it shut, and it loads. Uhh ohh, now it really looks scary. The same drawn on paper art on the box is throughout the menus. Don’t worry you will see that the art somewhat fills the theme in the game (and it grew on me).

Chose “The Tour” and the first thing you do is create a profile then create a character. Character creation is actually a little lame. You chose male or female, whether you want to ride a board or skis. Next your persona, which I still don’t understand. There are ten personas which are built into pre-made characters but can then be altered like you were using a template. Where the persona comes into that, I don’t know, but dieing to find out. The last thing you chose is your head.

The game at that point will autosave (if you chose the option), and begin to load. The one cool thing with loading is when it is ready to send you to an event “X continue” pops up on the screen and the controller vibrates. Letting those who aren’t paying attention know, “Hey dummy, let’s go!”

You press X and “Beat Elise to the Bottom” appears on the screen and boom, your dropped into your first event. Here’s where the beauty of the game becomes apparent. From playing so many racing games and having a given path or track to stay on makes you want to stay on the clear and beaten path a lot. But the game really shines when you go around this tree or over that hill to what looks like nothing and magically you find a gold mind of rails, jumps and shortcuts.

Your character moves fluidly and reacts well to collisions and other physics of the game. Visually, I got immersed into the game. The faster you go, a "tunnel vision" effect occurs, giving you a good effect of the extreme speed. And, instead of the pretty, six foot tall snowflakes from SSX3, there now are spinning money symbols with wings (“$”) as money collectables throughout the mountain. There are also other icons such as speed boosts. In addition to gameplay power-ups, there are special camera locations (if you happen to get the camera) where a photo of you at that location is saved to the extras section of the main menu.

You obtain money buy winning events, collecting the “$”, and a small amount from your tricks. With a fat wad in your pants, you can purchase a little bling-bling. Boards are split into three groups: race, trick and combo. Then there are different tricks that you can purchase to replace the lame ones that your character starts with.

One of the downers so far about this game is that there are only fifteen or so different tricks to chose from, where SSX3 had at least fifty. Your clothing choices are lacking too. Some items are cool but few are worth being worn by any character.

I will continue this one at a later date!