Before we start on the SSX review let me tell you a story. This story is about a boy who connected with his father over the course of the SSX franchise. The boy and his father played every game, getting all the golds, beating each others time, and generaly having fun. While these games had their problems, they were nothing less than great. The added experience of racing to “Hundred Percent” a character against your father made them all the better. That boy was me.
I tell you that story not for the purpose of self indulgence but to explain my position. I have never been your typical SSX player. If the SSX franchise had trophies I would have the Platinum in every game as would my father. So when the new SSX game was announced we were excited to say the least. When we both played the game however… let me just say that we were less than pleased. I can appreciate some of the changes and additions made, a majority of them are for the better. What I can not appreciate is the dichotomy between fantastic levels and absolutely un-fun levels.
In the most recent incarnation of SSX there are more Drops (a tracks starting point) than there has ever been before. This is mostly due to the new technology that allows the developrs to map out a mountain from the real world and then tweak them for playability. While this seems like a cool idea it has a terrible side effect, quantity over quality. There may be over 150 tracks but only around half, if that, are actually fun to play.
There are several reasons why these levels are infuriating and why the game as a whole is a poor successor to its predecessors. The greatest setback is the addition of a failstate. This may seem trivial as almost all games have some sort of failstate, but SSX has never had one. Anytime you would ever fly off the edge you would just respawn back on the mountain and be on your way. While this would have a negative impact on trick runs, as your trick would be lost, it made race runs way more fun. It is infuriating to be flying down the mountain only to hit a jump at just the right angle to go careening off into the abyss. Then just to add insult to injury you have to hold down the rewind button and watch your mistake again as everyone else blazes on without you.
Now is when you say “Just get better at the game” and I respond with “Shut up.” Because of the speed and ferocity at which you are descending the mountains is is sometimes flat out impossible to not fall off the earth. This is especially a problem on some of the narrower levels where the developers forgot you were on a snowboard and thought this was a tightrope walking simulation. Being restricted in your movements and being afraid to make a jump for the most air possible is a huge problem.
The issues are not only tied to race runs and while trick runs are better they are still not great. There are several levels where you are tasked with getting around a gajillion points in tight and narrow caves with little jumping. To top this all off your adventured in disappointment land feature a ceiling. No, not a figurative glass ceiling that you can never seem to break through but an actual one, made of rocks. It is difficult to fathom in which meeting this design decision was made, but it might have gone a little like this.
“So we are bringing back the very beloved franchise SSX, known in part for getting stupid cool air and massive tricks. What could we do to make this resonate with today’s generation?”
“What if we made it devoid of any fun?”
“Johnson! You’re a genius! But how?”
“What if we just made it impossible to do fun tricks without being punished? We could add a point stealing rewind feature and ceilings. That way they become too timid to get that stupid cool air.”
“Oh, Johnson…”
I can only assume that they were married the following summer.
Another thing that should have been thrown in the garbage and burned under a preist’s watch is the Deadly Descents. There are around ten of these “story” missions that serve as a sort of tutorial for the game. Do yourself a favor and just skip over them as they leave such a bad taste that you may not want to play the parts of this game that do not suck. Through out them you will learn the basics of the game with an underdeveloped character that can not seem to understand the concept of a turn. All the while you will be introduced to the new mechanics of the game such as the Wingsuit, one of the few great things added, as well as everything else, which is not good.
The Wingsuit is an item that not only boosts the possibilities of a run but makes them more fun. None of the other additional items add anything to the game. Instead they place an arbitrary level of difficulty in the game. Better breath enough oxygen or stay in the sun, lest you end up dying. My character just jumped off a 300 foot cliff and landed on solid ice after spinning around enough times to make the earth go back in time. The last thing that I need to worry about is avoiding some trees so that the heath meter I was suddenly gifted in this level does not go down.
Believe it or not this game actually does have some good parts. When you are on an unrestricted track and left to rack up points like crazy it is great. Doing crazy jumps at crazy speeds to get stupid cool air is an experience that no other game can really capture. The problem is that with all the other bile pumped into SSX those experiences can be few and far between.
The last gripe I have with SSX borderlines on a personal one, and that is the multiplayer mode. That is to say that there really is not one. The way it works is that there are races taking place all over the globe. Many of these races have a large pool of credits that you can win if you place in the higher brackets of scores. While this is all well and good there is no true multiplayer. Meaning my father and I could not have some of the crazy intense races we used to. Instead we trash talk eachother’s scores on tracks, fun, but not the same.
Maybe it is just me, wishing things could be like they were. They say that sequels always have the fans who are angry and still buy the game, in my case I bought two. But beyond all the “change rage” there is something else. A unrelenting feeling of disappointment. SSX coming into this generation with great graphics and a huge number of tracks was one of my dreams for so long. When it happened though it was not just lack luster, it was actively bad. The game suffers from boring to bad level design, restrictive gameplay, and boring multiplayer. While I may just be an angry fan I am at least a fan, as such I can not recommend SSX to anyone.
Now please excuse me while I weep bitterly in the corner.
