This isn’t your PlayStation 2’s SSX.
It’s got high-def graphics, online capability, and... well, after that, it is kinda your
PS2’s SSX.
Plenty of familiar faces, deranged downhill powder-spraying action, races, score challenges,
they’re all here.
But, as this is a series reboot, they’re also kitted out with a new control scheme
(which can be abandoned in favor of the original layout), a couple newcomers to the SSX circuit,
a strange narrative paradigm pitting Zoe Payne’s team of chilled celebrities against Griff
Simmons... and I could go on about how their ages just don’t add up, but I won’t...
and the THREAT OF IMMINENT DEATH.
Yes, in order to attract fickle online viewership (tell me about it), these stalwart (read:
loony) souls are going to board down some of the most ridiculously dangerous mountains
in the world, just to say they did.
And to get money.
Because that’s what it’s all about.
This is one of those games that leaves me, as a longtime fan of the series, woefully
split.
On the one hand, they’re trying to make the experience a little more believable, a
little less insane.
No snowboarding around Hawaii for you; you get actual peaks like Mt.
Everest or Fitz Roy or Denali.
The economics of the sport itself are directly called into question.
There’s no more magically teleporting back onto the track...
instead, you magically rewind time (and take a significant score penalty).
Some of the most emotive dialogue in the game is the encouraging banter from your chopper-pilot
as you run the course.
It’s a stark contrast from the interpersonal, punch-throwing antics of Tricky and SSX3,
and I kinda miss it.
The game does hearken back to its most-acclaimed outing by including a remix of Run DMC's 'Tricky'
when you're on a hot streak of tricks.
Unfortunately, though, it's some ridiculous dubstepped-out remix.
We actually have a word for 'Dubstepped-out Run DMC Remix,' and that word is 'WRONG.’
On the other hand, the new “Survival” challenges, which pit you against those nearly-eponymous
“Deadly Descents,” might be my favorite addition to the formula.
You have to snowboard from Point A to Point B, without falling down a chasm, passing out
from lack of oxygen, being engulfed in an avalanche, breaking every bone in your body
as you speed through a forest, or freezing to death in the Antarctic shadows.
Only certain drops threaten your life, though, so if you still just want a trick attack or
a simple race, you always have those options available.
The game’s main story mode sees Zoe collecting her team around the nine mountain ranges that
comprise this SSX circuit, as they try to outdo the magically-aged Griff and his ego.
If you couldn’t care about the plot, and you’re not really missing much, you can
simply pay to unlock each track around the globe using the credits you earn for completing
races, collecting snowflakes and geotags, or - if you’re unable to perceive fun - blowing
real-world money.
Alternately, you can compete online by paying into a jackpot, posting your best time/score/survived
distance for that particular drop, and receiving a cut of the total based on your performance.
Now that split-screen competition is right out, and timing would be a bear across the
interwebs, the majority of your interaction is spent in more passive modes, in the form
of ghost data.
Of course, these online competitions also require an online pass, which you have to
buy separately if you get the game secondhand.
Just throw some more money at it!
A number of things about SSX rub me the wrong way.
It’s not the same flavor of crazy as Tricky, one of my desert-island top-five games.
But this new crazy... isn’t “bad” at all.
Much as I liked those older games, I’m finding that I’m having fun with this one for entirely
different reasons.
It’s a new paradigm for a reboot, and certainly an enjoyable game, especially if you’re
new to the series and thus wouldn’t have these kinds of conflicts.
Pick it up, enjoy it, compete online, and try to stay alive... but keep your copies
of its predecessors close at hand, as well.