SSX on Tour, PS2, EA sports BIG

SSX on Tour Is the 4th SSX game in the same vein as SSX tricky. If you haven’t played an SSX game it’s a snowboarding game, not dissimilar to tony hawks.

Well I’m a huge fan of the Tony Hawks games until 4, and I loved SSX 3. Personally I haven’t played this game for round about a year so it took a while to wipe the rust off. This is a great game but compared to SSX 3 it has some flaws. For starters they removed the free roaming aspect and DJ Atomica. One of the interesting changes was the switch from the cast of characters who you select in SSX 3 to a personalised character, the biggest advantage is the ability to customise your character to the nth degree, but it removes the great one-liners that the characters used to say.

Anyway back onto the game. The game play is really solid and the ambiance is great. The graphics and the art style are great and still keep up today. Each zone has a funny name and its own specific feel, from “hot dam” with its gigantic well dams, to “on the rocks” with its thick woods and frozen river to “compilation” which is like a skate park with snow.  Unlike some games (FFXII) compared to PS3 graphics the graphics don’t look blocky, mainly because of the very smooth and cartoony art style. The music is amazing; it has bloc party so it automatically wins.

As for multiplayer, it’s not bad. It’s only 2 player and you can only do mission that you have cleared on the mountain. There is a weird and wonderful cast of characters like psymon the psycho Canadian punk, Conrad a 2-d hand drawn Viking and many, many more.  My main complaint with the multiplayer is that it doesn’t really give you the ability to explore. You have a link with your partner and due to hardware constraints if you go in different directions the game will randomly warp out one of the players, which is a bit annoying but nesacery.

SSX on tour is still a great game all these years on so if you see it cheap defiantly pick it up.

Thumbs up if: you like snowboarding or skate boarding games or if you like arcadey extreme sports game e.g. Tony Hawks 4 and earlier

Rent it if: your curious but these days it’s probably cheaper to buy it.

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