A fun game that might not have much staying power
Other than renting Amped 3 one time I haven't played very many snowboarding games. My love of Tony Hawk series of games have at least made me interested in checking this release out since it was on PS plus last month. The story of SSX is just a excuse to get the player to try out every character and all of the gear that makes the dangerous descents doable. Team SSX has to prove they are the number 1 snowboarder group by surviving the 9 deadliest descents while rival snowboarder Griff tries to trump SSX by doing all of the descents before they do.
Controlling the many characters is rather easy with them playing similar to any other snowboarding game. Along with a easy to learn trick system and a boost that happens to be fueled by those tricks. By the end of the world tour they give you access to 10 characters yet all of them play exactly the same. The only advantage they have over each other is that of them begin with a unique piece of gear like a wing-suit so you don't have to spend some credits on outfitting them. (They also have stat boosts like +10 to tricks but I couldn't notice the effect of said boost in game.) Since I mentioned it every time the player competes a level they will gain credits to spend on better boards or boost items to make it easier to compete tougher mountains.
All of that is just a excuse to trick,ride, or survive a trip down the different mountains in this game. A trick event is just like playing Tony Hawk but instead of doing tricks in a school you'll always be going down a different snowy mountain. Race events doesn't need to be explained so that just leaves survival events. As the name implies depending on which mountain you go down you will need to use a different set of gear to survive the descent. For example armor will protect you from trees/rocks or you will need to use a wing suit to fly over pits. Along with all of that they also give the player a rewind mechanic to fix any mistakes you might make during a event. To be honest other than making up for falling into a pit during a survival event rewinds seemed pretty much useless in any other mode.
Overall this game relies on a lot of people on your friends list to play through stages and leave their time/score behind to give the player a reason to try to beat their time/score. Even with SSX being on PS Plus I didn't notice anyone else on my friends list playing. Without that aspect of the game in effect I didn't have much of a reason to keep coming back for more. I also started to see parts of one level transplanted into another one later on in this game. Which just made me think they didn't take the time to make every mountain unique. The camera itself also hinders in a few spots. For example to make the avalanche levels more suspenseful they angle the camera towards the player. That camera angle hindered my attempt more than if they just kept the normal behind the back angle. Plus the wing-suit gear also never felt like it controlled very well which made me skip it whenever it came up.
None of those negatives turn this game into something that isn't fun to play. Snowboarding down a mounting pulling off a crazy 5 million point combo is just as fun as any other game like this one. The controls are tight in almost every situation (Other than the wingsuit.) so whenever I failed a jump or trick it was usually my fault. If you looking for a game that has a great combo system that allows you to trick all the way down a mountain along with some other so-so events this is the game for you.
