DLC Review of Mt. Eddie and Classic Characters Bundle Pack for SSX

This is a DLC review of the Mt. Eddie and Classic Characters Bundle Pack for SSX.

Score: 4/5


I really enjoyed the new SSX, but there were a fair number of people who wanted it to be more like Tricky and SSX 3. Lucky for them the development team heard their cries and decided to release Mt. Eddie, which is a clear homage to the SSX days of old.

One of the major complaints of the new SSX was that the drops were filled with too many random holes. At first it’s not that big a deal, but the further you delve into the game the worse it gets. This makes it so that you can’t truly focus on racing, or tricking. You constantly have to watch yourself in order to stay on the track, but Mt. Eddie gets rid of that. It’s either pure tricking, or pure racing. No longer are there gaping chasms to fall into.

As you can see there are tons of jumps.

Mt. Eddie is the ultimate spot for tricking. There are rails, jumps, and half-pipes everywhere. This gives the whole course a great flow. The only thing you have to figure out is where your next trick is coming from, and it ends up feeling great. To make things even better it’s always nighttime and fireworks are perpetually going off. The mountain has a lot more color than the rest of the game and it looks really cool.

The whole mountain has 9 different drops, which are distributed between trick and race events. The race events are okay, but just like in the main game they lose out to the trick events. It just seems weird to try and get down the mountain has fast as possible when there are so many opportunities for tricking. As you’d expect the trick events on Mt. Eddie are awesome. As I said there are places to trick everywhere and on top of that the events are all fairly long. The trick event at the top of the mountain can take 15-20 minutes to complete, which makes it more like the single mountains that old SSX games had.

Imagine something like this, but for 20 minutes.

In an attempt to cram more nostalgia into the game they also decided to add Classic Characters. This is the part of the DLC that totally lost me. It adds seven new characters to play as, but they’re not really new at all. Instead they’re just 7 different versions of characters the game already has. The only difference is that they look like they used to in SSX Tricky. This means that there are only technically 6 retro characters, because both versions of Eddie look almost exactly the same. What’s really lame is that since they’re separate characters you have to level them up again. It takes a really long time to level a character up to 11, so it’s not exactly worth it for that.

In order to offset the need to re-level each character they each get their own unique retro boards. They’re really good and most of them look pretty cool. It’s a nice attempt, but it still doesn’t make it worth re-leveling an alternate version of the same character. It may have been better if they added retro costumes instead of making separate characters.

I don't really prefer any of the classic looks to the new ones, but I'm sure some people feel differently.

The bundle is certainly worth it, because it’s only $7.99. If you buy the characters and Mt. Eddie separately they’re $5.99 a piece, which seems a little steep. Whether you’re looking for some old school SSX nostalgia or just looking to have more SSX content in your life then this pack is going to fit your needs. With the quality of Mt. Eddie there’s hope that all future DLC will be just as entertaining.