“Defy Reality - Own the Planet, ” is the appropriate tagline for SSX, developed by EA Canada and published by EA Sports. SSX, which stands for Snowboard Super Cross, is the return of one of the most widely known and popular snowboarding games ever conceived. The SSX franchise has been missing in action for the past six years and while other snowboarding franchises have tried to fill the hole left by the zany antics of SSX, there can only be one.
SSX is divided into three parts: the World Tour, Explore and Global Events. World Tour functions as the game’s narrative. Griff, the SSX superstar, has gone rogue and is making Team SSX look bad by conquering the nine deadly descents in parts of the world such as Antarctica, Alaska and the Himalayas. It’s up to the player to surmount the deadly descents and win back the love from the public and increase the reputation for Team SSX. Needless to say, the story is pretty light on narrative and sometimes downright nonsensical but it does its job to introduce new and veteran players to the new game mechanics that EA Canada have put in the game to bring the franchise into the next generation.
More than 100 racecourses are available in SSX and each one is as different as one location is from the rest of the planet. There are three events to play in SSX: Trick-it, Race-it and Survive-it. Trick-it tasks the player with pulling off combinations of tricks for the highest score, and Race-it is a simple race from the top to the bottom. One new addition is the Survive-it mode in which the player must survive a deadly descent. The deadly descents range from gravity to trees to oxygen deprivation. The player survives these hazards by equipping oxygen tanks, armor and wing-suits. Yes. Wing-suits. These add some variety to SSX so the repetitive grind of snowboarding and tricking is lessened but I found it frustrating on several occasions when death happened often and it became more about trial and error and less about my ability to carve my own path down the mountain.
The rhythm of SSX is very important to the overall gameplay. The tricks you do increase the boost and doing more tricks lets you pull off more elaborate tricks than before. These in turn allow you to do super-tricks, which are so elaborate and ridiculous; it’s almost comical and fun to see each of the ten character’s unique tricks. When this flow is broken or impeded in any way, the game slows to a crawl, and sometimes, when you’re flying down the mountain, you can get caught on a piece of the game world or end up on the side of a mountain rather than through the tunnel you wanted to go through.
I haven’t even touched on the online portion of the game and it is probably the most robust of the three. You go through the courses in the game and you set a score in any of the three modes mentioned above. You must pay an entry fee with the in-game currency and that goes into a big pot. The players with the highest scores get up to one million credits, and more than 100,000 players can shoot for the top scores. The events can last from one week to one hour so you’re participating in SSX even when you are away from the game console.
SSX is the return of the king that fans of the franchise have been waiting for. There are a few hiccups here and there in the gameplay department but the game makes you forget about them quickly. And even if you aren’t a diehard SSX fan, like myself, there is enough content and a vibrant community of gamers that make SSX worth the price of admission.
Sound off in the comments section below or send me an email at shfawcet@asu.edu with your opinions on the SSX franchise.
