I can't be the only one who thinks the darkness challenges in this game are complete trash right? I really hate the fact that the only truly difficult runs are ONLY difficult because the game often obscures 100% of your vision! The headlamps provide such an unreliable field of view that you may as well not be using them at all!

The more I play this game, the more the new additions just seem like poorly thoughtout tacked on ideas.

Which Darkness? This Darkness? Or This Darkness? Surely not this Darkness?

@Mesoian said:

I really hate the fact that the only truly difficult runs are ONLY difficult because the game often obscures 100% of your vision!

That's kind of the point of the challenge.

It wouldn't be difficult if it was just a daytime map with some gray filter slapped on it. The challenge comes from the headlamp being an unreliable source of light, just as it would be in reality.

Hell, I thought he was talking about Charlie Murphy and his brother Eddie, the Darkness Brothers.

Darkness in games is just a bad idea all together imo. Just sick and tired of games playing on not allowing you to see (something this game also does in other ways than just darkness). Sure it works for moody stuff, but dark games in general are just shit.

They should have done an underwater level...

@Jack268 said:

It wouldn't be difficult if it was just a daytime map with some gray filter slapped on it.

I think a lot of these darkness drops would still be pretty hard in daylight. Being shrouded in darkness just makes them far more difficult.

Gotta say, as someone who played the hell out of the older games, this game is hard.

Yeah, it's pretty damned hard. It was something we struggled a lot with during development. Totally understand if it's not your cup of tea. The easiest way to get through it is to not worry about doing the traditional spins / flips that you'd do in the air on other tracks. It makes you switch up your strategies. Take it slow, too.

I hope you find other stuff in the game you enjoy though :)

@Vitor said:

Which Darkness? This Darkness? Or This Darkness? Surely not this Darkness?

Fuck YES Pajama Sam!

Yeah I've never liked their music The Darkness

Crap, now I want to add "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" to my SSX playlist.

@Chaser324 said:

@Jack268 said:

It wouldn't be difficult if it was just a daytime map with some gray filter slapped on it.

I think a lot of these darkness drops would still be pretty hard in daylight. Being shrouded in darkness just makes them far more difficult.

Precisely. The African courses alone are extremely tough on their own. The tight nature of the caverns and the instant kill drops which are obscured by ramps make navagating 60 part skill and 40 percent luck. The fact that you can't see through 60% of the course makes things needlessly frustrating, especially on things like Global Events where rewinds are often turned off.

But it's not just Africa. The Tree survival stages, the night based Patagonia stages which are often ice caves which are completely devoid of light, hell, almost every speed-centric path on the more dangerous paths are completely shrouded in darkness, save for the occasional piece of flare. I know there's a need to make things difficult, especially to leverage risk/reward when it comes to getting high leaderboard scores, but I can't help but feel that darkness is the overarching problem most of the multi-tiered stages suffer from.

I also don't like Oxygen, but that's just because you can't remap buttons. If you could put oxygen on R3 in stick mode, it would be fine.

Structurally, it's the biggest issue I have. The one thing that makes me scream at the Television more than anything else is Darkness, because there's nothing you can do about it.

Dont boost, hold LT to grind on rails and don't spin. It'll take awhile but yes, that one was no fun.

Yea the very end of the World Tour mode was a pain in the ass for the longest time. I spent more than an hour on it last night trying to beat it and I was always lose so much time in the darkness area that it was near impossible and I ended up so frustrated that i had to stop. Today, I had the smarts to go and buy better gear in Explore Mode and after about a half hour was able to pull it off and boy was I happy. The darkness will remain one of my least favorite thing in this game and thankfully can just avoid them, and only do them if they are the last thing to do.

I would definitely say Darkness is the hardest deadly descent in the game, but I'll tell you I just got gold in the race it version of that course and it was satisfying as hell. I don't mind having some truly difficult tracks to juxtapose against the more laid back runs.

The darkness deadly descent was a bitch to tackle. Easily the hardest of the game. Like others said; do not boost, grind everything, and just take your time. I really enjoyed all of them but that one rubbed me the wrong way.

I didn't have any issue with it. O_o

The White Out battle? Oh man I don't think I even got half way yet. >_>

Hey guys, they're called "deadly descents" for a reason. A little challenge never hurt anybody, but that avalanche was hella stupid, how am I supposed to know when to jump with that camera angle? Not hard but just plays bad....

@Vinny_Says: @Vinny_Says said:

Hey guys, they're called "deadly descents" for a reason. A little challenge never hurt anybody, but that avalanche was hella stupid, how am I supposed to know when to jump with that camera angle? Not hard but just plays bad....

I'll agree with that, avalanche wasn't the hardest deadly descent but it was the least fun. I haven't liked any part in a game played from that particular view since skifree. The courses with avalanche conditions that are played from the standard view are much more fun.

A headlamp is an unreliable source of light? Ya don't say? Man, I'm sure they work even better in real life. -_-

Also, who said that the game HAD to be difficult? They could've made it an easy fucking walkthrough. It doesn't matter.

Seriously, you're bitching about literally nothing.

I think the oxygen stuff is really dumb. I bet they just needed to think up one last deadly descent idea for a region or something...

I finished the darkness deadly descent on my first try. The race before it is where I was frustrated. I think the pulse goggles descent is even worse, though.

@Barrabas said:

@Vinny_Says: @Vinny_Says said:

Hey guys, they're called "deadly descents" for a reason. A little challenge never hurt anybody, but that avalanche was hella stupid, how am I supposed to know when to jump with that camera angle? Not hard but just plays bad....

I'll agree with that, avalanche wasn't the hardest deadly descent but it was the least fun. I haven't liked any part in a game played from that particular view since skifree. The courses with avalanche conditions that are played from the standard view are much more fun.

Yeah, but once you get tricky, you're pretty much invincible. I think the only one I didn't really like was Oxygen, just because of the button they assigned it to.

The survive it levels are a lot easier when you realize you can take your time and keep slowing yourself down.

I really didn't have any problems whatsoever with this one, found it easy and very boring to be honest. Oxygen on the other hand was a real bitch, so frustrating since I wound sometimes die even though I pressed the oxygen button with room to spare, also working with about 8-9 buttons at the same time as concentrating on not crashing/going fast is not fun, and I'm normally great at multitasking. Not a big fan of the "deadly" concept, Avalanche and Rocks were quite awesome, but otherwise I like my courses to be without any way of death.

i believe in a thing called love

@Error1355 said:

I didn't have any issue with it. O_o

The White Out battle? Oh man I don't think I even got half way yet. >_>

same here! i beat the darkness on my first try. Im on at least 6 for the whiteout!

For the whiteout stuff, I found it helpful to pull back the camera a bit (back button on 360). It gives you a wider view and you can see a little more.

I'm curious how much of the new stuff is eventually going to be ignored by people once they survive it. So far (to me) none of that new stuff is fun, and the race/trick events that have pieces of those survival level scattered throughout are even less fun.

The only event I found remotely fun was the avalanche. The rest breaks the flow and is frustrating to play.

@Xeiphyer said:

The survive it levels are a lot easier when you realize you can take your time and keep slowing yourself down.

This! Remember this even for the races! It makes you do something other than hold down boost until you're at the bottom of the mountain. Slooooooow your roll and memorize the route, like old school days. If you don't like it still, there's 130 other drops for you to do.

Never use headlamps. Pulse goggles are the way to go.

Which Darkness? This Darkness? Or This Darkness? Surely not this Darkness?

Personally, I don't like escort missions and fetch quests.

I have no issues with darkness at all, infact i quite like them. Havent found a deadly descent i dont like actually.

Never use headlamps. Pulse goggles are the way to go.

I beat darkness on my second try, I quite liked it. The only deadly decent that took a couple of tries was whiteout and that was mostly because it is a race. I don't get the hate for the deadly descents, they were never that hard and they made the World Tour more varied.

@SpaceInsomniac said:

@Shadow said:

Never use headlamps. Pulse goggles are the way to go.

Good idea. I'll have to try this.

Ha, I just tried it on Hush and got gold in race on my first try. This totally breaks the darkness maps. They might as well no longer be deadly descents when using pulse goggles. Kind of disappointing in a way actually.

@Vitor said:

Which Darkness? This Darkness? Or This Darkness? Surely not this Darkness?

no the darkness...

You leave Mike Patton alone!

@SeriouslyNow said:

@Vitor said:

Which Darkness? This Darkness? Or This Darkness? Surely not this Darkness?

What about The Darkness?

(Only because the song is sofakingcool)

DAMN YOU FUCKER!

beat me to it

Now now, I quite like THAT darkness.

Hell, I thought he was talking about Charlie Murphy and his brother Eddie, the Darkness Brothers.

@ahgunsillyo said:

@NMC2008

Hell, I thought he was talking about Charlie Murphy and his brother Eddie, the Darkness Brothers.

DARKNESS, EVERYBODY! DARKNESS IS SPREADING'!

IT'S A CELEBRATION BITCHES!

@SeriouslyNow said:

@Red12b: I love that song man. Sometimes I'll play Love is only a feeling back to back a few times back to back because it just makes me wanna, ya know?

I beat darkness on my second try, I quite liked it. The only deadly decent that took a couple of tries was whiteout and that was mostly because it is a race. I don't get the hate for the deadly descents, they were never that hard and they made the World Tour more varied.

Another prime example of a guy who can't handle a challenge. SSX has never been an 'easy' game. I remember freaking the fuck out about how hard some of the gold medals were hard to get in Tricky. They do obscure the vision, but you can do things to improve it: play at night. equip a headlamp AND pulse goggles. Up the brightness on your TV. Learn to accept you're not going to Gold every single run first try, get into the challenge of it! it builds character. WAH. It's fun and exciting.

Plus if you spin really fast with the headlamp it's like a sweet dance party.

Just to restate my point, whoever thought taking sight away from the player was a good way of making things more difficult was an idiot. Darkness, Whiteout, the heavy tree folliage which obscures the course as you're going through it, they're all cheap ways of making the player restart over and over due to taking the ability to gauge trajectory while going off a jump. It doesn't make the game harder, it makes it more frustrating.

@D_Justice91: No it fucking isn't. Death Zone is a great drop because it combines all the elements that the deadly decents throws at you. But the biggest bullshit on that drop is when you go into complete darkness and end up falling down kill pits that you couldn't see even with the headlamp. The major difference between the previous SSX games and this one was the focus on player ability. In SSX2 and 3, it was all down to finding the best lines, keeping your tricky active, and knowing exactly when to take that early jump off a ramp. In this game, it feels like 70% of the ramps lead directly into death pits, and the "difficulty" is simply trying to stay on the stage. The devs had some sort of fetish with kill pits in this one, something that none of the other SSX games even were mired down with. Even the crazy top peaks in SSX3 where you're supposed to be in uninhabitable areas of those mountain ranges were never this bad. It feels like the most difficult courses are only difficult because there's a tiny strip of land that you're suppose to navigate while being completely blind. It sucks, it's not fun, and those races are the only reason why I haven't finished the single player yet. My times on well designed thought out courses where not every ramp leads you into a pit are great. And judging by my friends list leaderboards, those are the most fun to play as most people who have friended me up haven't even thought about touching the Deadly Decent races or trick drops.

I understand they wanted themeing in this game, but when your themes are new ways to annoy the player rather than hinder the player, you done fucked up.

And using pulse goggles do nothing. The pulse goggles are 100% useless. Even on whiteout stages, it's often easier to get through things without them.

I really like this game otherwise. But the obscuring of vision was nothing short of a stupid move.