Review of SSX

This review is based on my experience with the PS3 version of SSX.

Score: 4/5

Twelve years after its inception the SSX series has been rebooted with the highly creative title of SSX. Fans of the SSX franchise have been waiting five years to test their gravity defying snowboard skills on a new game and it has finally arrived. With the death of EA Sports BIG, EA Canada has attempted to breathe new life into the series. The result is a game that feels very familiar, while feeling completely new at the same time. Some changes made may upset long time fans, but there’s no denying that the final product is jam packed with insane snowboarding action. 

When the new SSX teaser first debuted during the 2010 Spike Game Awards the reaction was tepid at best. It was going by the name SSX: Deadly Descents. It depicted players dropping from helicopters onto real mountains trying to escape hazards like avalanches. In the past every slope was custom made and memorable, while all the characters were basically overblown caricatures. Those things paired with the insane snowboarding made SSX iconic.  The Deadly Descents trailer looked very dark and realistic, which garnered a lot of negative reaction.

The final product is halfway between the SSX of old and the Deadly Descents teaser. It’s not quite as over the top as it used to be, but it’s not overly realistic either. Familiar characters such as Mac, Zoe, Elise, and many others return in a much more muted form. They don’t talk very much during gameplay and aren’t as cartoony so a lot of their personalities aren’t totally apparent. The same thing can be said about the drops. They’re all based off of real mountains with procedurally generated jumps and grind rails. While they function well enough in the game they don’t feel very unique. The reboot tries to strike a balance between realism and the SSX style of old. It ends up straddling an odd line that makes me wish they went farther in either direction.

Franchise mainstays like Mac return in a much more muted form.

One of the things that makes me wish they went farther is the story. For the campaign you’ll be following snowboarding team SSX as they attempt to conquer the world’s deadliest mountains, known as deadly descents. They’ve been dormant for a while, so they have to take on dangerous drops to get back into the spotlight. These deadly descents are an interesting new game type that sees you rider trying to survive as opposed to getting points or a fast time. The entire goal is to make it to the bottom alive, which is sometimes quite challenging. In order to do so you’ll need to equip the riders with specific gear. Armor will help you survive an avalanche, while a headlamp will allow you to see in pitch black caves. There are nine deadly descents to get through. Although they’re cool to experience once it’s much more appealing to play race and trick events. There isn’t enough of a story to make the campaign worth playing through multiple times.

Admittedly most people don’t come to SSX for its’ riveting story. The most important part of the game, the gameplay, is still great. You can choose from two control schemes. Classic is just like it used to be. The face buttons will be used to do tricks, while the shoulder buttons are used to boost. Alternatively you can use the right stick for all your tricking needs much like modern skateboarding games. It’s all about your preference and what’s the most comfortable. SSX is all about doing tricks. They’re almost always the key to success. In trick events they’ll obviously net you score and in race events they’ll get you boost to go faster. When you do a certain amount of tricks in a row you’ll enter tricky, which allows for unlimited boost. Chaining tricks together also boosts a multiplier, which combines with a trick counter in order to give you ridiculous amounts of points.

You're going to want to be tricking all the time.

In SSX it’s all about flow. When you’re going down the mountain at a super fast speed tricking off of everything it’s exhilarating. A cool feature of the game is the way it changes the music depending on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. The in game soundtrack will rise, fall, and distort in various ways as you move down the mountain. Somehow the game even does a good job of distorting custom music, this means that anything sounds good. I highly recommend putting your own music in, because it sounds great and adds a lot to the experience. When you wreck the music screeches to a halt along with your scoring capabilities.

While the gameplay is super fun and fast paced, it can often be just as unforgiving. Wrecking can be devastating and sometimes ruin an entire run. In an attempt to ease this problem a rewind feature was added, which might as well not even be in the game. If you rewind during a race your opponents will continue moving and if you rewind in a trick event you’ll lose a whole lot of score. It just doesn’t make any real sense to rewind, unless you want to place a geo tag. Geo tags are collectibles you can place only when rewinding to try and get in game currency. If you place them in a good spot you’ll get the maximum amount of credits. Since rewind is basically useless this means that doing the drops over and over for incremental improvement is necessary. In order to help this process along SSX has an interesting pseudo multiplayer.

When it was announced that the game wouldn’t have honest to goodness multiplayer fans were understandably upset. The alternative isn’t all that bad and is in fact quite fun. It’s all very reminiscent of the speed log from Need For Speed Hot Pursuit. Outside of the campaign in explore mode there are 149 or so drops to choose from. When you complete a run your ghost will be uploaded for your friends to compete against. When they lose you’ll gain in game currency. There are also massive global events to compete in. Some are free, while you have to buy into others. You’ll compete on a drop and try to do as well as you can. In the end you’ll be placed into a scoring bracket and you’ll be paid accordingly. 

You can choose any drop as a global event, but you might have to pay an entry fee.

So what’s good about in game currency? You can buy equipment for your character. As you doe events your characters will level up. Depending on what level they are you have access to buying certain gear. You can buy boards, mods, and equipment to help you do better in events. To make the system interesting an MMO style color coding system is used. If you’re the kind of person who likes a lot of loot then you’ll be right at home with this system. It’s a new concept for an extreme sports game.

Extreme sports have fallen off in recent years, so it’s nice to see this series getting a fresh coat of paint. For a reboot SSX tries quite a few interesting things. While they don’t all work, I think that they leave room for an interesting sequel should there be one. This iteration may not be exactly like the others, but it’s incredibly fun. Like I said SSX is all about flow. Speeding down a drop tricking off of everything while shooting for a perfect run feels incredible. A lot of the elements of SSX make it incredibly easy to get absorbed in competing with your friends.  Even if you don’t have any friends to play against SSX is still an incredibly fun game. There’s something magical about it and I can’t recommend it enough. 

The future of the SSX is bright and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.

     -Manny