Review: SSX: On Tour

Run To The Hills
EA Sports Big / Playstation 2 Xbox Gamecube / Everyone 10+

Since the first game burst onto the sparse winter sports market in 2000, the SSX series has thrived off a frenetic pace of snowboarding and a danceable techno vibe that set it apart from all the competition. Its trademark craziness of characters and tricks has allowed it to outlast all other entries into the genre, including one made with the Tony Hawk template. Having already hit its third game high the series is making a large stylistic change, abandoning its techno roots for a hand drawn metal design that may or may not push away some fans.

As with almost all extreme sports games, the story mode is simply a means to string together progressively harder challenges. Compared to the competition, though, On Tour’s tour mode seems especially bare bones. Players complete challenges to earn money for various unlockables including accessories, boards, skis, and characters. None of this is especially bad, but genre contemporaries have evolved from this most basic style of career mode.

The traditional SSX gameplay is intact from SSX 3 and provides a great amount of the game’s appeal. The series has always excelled at coupling the unrealistically gravity defying moves with a natural flow This has set it apart from the Tony Hawk style, and On Tour is no exception. The addition of skis fits nicely into the game and provides a full move set along with the new dynamic of landing forward or backward. A problem arises with a lack of a tutorial to teach the deep and complex move system, but those who take the time to learn will find hundreds of tricks to pull with a setup that spans the entire controller.

As introduced in SSX3, the gameplay takes place on one giant mountain that is fully shreddable. One of the greatest joys in gaming is to simply snowboard or ski down the vast expanses of the mountain. Action flows effortlessly from area to area, and different parts of the mountain provide contrast between the competition areas, which are full of jumps and rails, and the more natural areas which are prettier to look at and whose large amounts of trees provide players with ample opportunities to Sunny Bono themselves.

The only hitch that may turn some fans off is the large shift in style. What was once a colorful techno-meets-snow vibe is now a hand-drawn black-and-white metal experience. The style is arresting, to be sure. Freaky imagery starts quickly with an intro that features a guitar playing unicorn, a roadie with a backhoe for an arm, and his 26-wheeler, all set to the beat of Iron Maiden’s Run To The Hills. The style change even extends to the gameplay, as the “uber” moves of the previous games have been renamed “monster” moves.

There is an added bonus for Gamecube owners to distract from some controller related issues, as in NBA Street V3, Mario, Luigi, and the improperly attired Princess
Peach, are available in all their cross-promotional glory to shred the mountain.

Despite trying it’s best to distract with the style shift, SSX has started to suffer from the lack of innovation known as sequel syndrome. The tour mode is painfully bland and the joy of free riding down the mountain only lasts so long. It will be interesting to see how such series as SSX can use the jump into the next generation to climb out of the rut they have fallen into. On Tour provides the SSX experience with a metal twist. This is by no means bad, but it could have definitely been more.

8/10
By Zack Rovinsky