SSX: Deadly Descents

[Jon]

You know, I wish one day children wouldn't be children.

 

Anybody under the age of twelve I can understand. They have yet to learn how the world really works, and as ignorant as they frankly are they cannot be blamed for this any more than I can be blamed for being ill, or you can be blamed for needing to eat. It's those above that begin to annoy me. If you're thirteen or older, the school system should have slapped some sense into you, if your parents already haven't. You snap out of the entitlement you feel towards everything unimportant - music, presents, cake...

 

So why, oh dear god why, do we have people aged between fifteen and thirty raging about the new SSX teaser?

 

We kind of knew there would be an SSX announcement this VGAs. The awards show, despite (realistically) being a complete farce, is still a hotbed for announcements of new titles and said titles are leaked almost as much as the E3 splurge. With EA trademarking a bunch of the domains for a new SSX, enough rumours to stuff no less than eighteen Sackboys and the mountain shot teaser, we knew it'd come.

 

What we didn't expect was the apparent style change. No more Mac and Kaori. What we get was dark, dangerous and exciting. A thirty second cinematic with zero gameplay, but plenty of premise, and a single selling blurb that hints towards a bit of danger. We cannot even hazard a guess of how the game will actually play.

 

But the rage. Oh dear god the rage. People old enough to have been twenty when the first game was released right through to people who never played the first SSX on account of just starting grade school are complaining about the style change - a change we haven't actually seen a lot of. That I can somehow understand, though, because after all the trailer was such a polar opposite to what the SSX series is known for and there is a bit of shock value to that.

 

What I don't understand, or at the very least don't like in the slightest, is how people are so quick to judge the gameplay. You know, the gameplay of a game we've seen absolutely nothing of. It has got so bad, people are even inventing mechanics to make it sound worse than we know it is. Why? All for the sake of slamming EA for rebooting a series that, as far as they are concerned, did not need a reboot.

 

Frankly this stinks of rose-tinted smelling salts and plenty of pot. What many of these people are not mentioning is that there hasn't actually been a really good game in the series since SSX3, which in itself was more of an advancement of SSX Tricky (but a very worthy advancement and possibly the best in the series as a whole). SSX On Tour was almost universally slammed by the fanbase, and most people have never head of Blur, or have simply forgotten about the existence of that Wii outing.

 

If EA was going to make a profit off this game, or at least reach some acclaim, they were going to have to change it a bit. Could the game be named anything other than SSX? Probably, but even so it would still be a successor at least spiritually. Without the SSX logo, the fanbase would be clambering even more for a new SSX game. With it, they are angry at the change in style.

 

They simply cant win.

 

My point is, don't get angry over the new game before we've seen so much as a screen shot of the actual gameplay. Sure, you're annoyed at the style change, but for all you know it could still be the great adrenalin-producing, laws-of-physics-breaking break-neck game you know and truely love, even with the possible added tastes of Realism in the style.

 

Look at it this way: The closest thing we've had to a HD-console SSX was Stoked and it's sequel on the 360. If you have never heard of those: You have a few mountains that are about 90% mapped in their entirely, and it's free roam. The idea was to be dropped on a mountain and have fun, but sloppy controls, iffy physics and no real enjoying goals eclipsed the technical achievement of having full weather patterns and awesome views.

 

In other words, the closest we've had to SSX this gen was fundamentally broken. Be thankful for what we have coming.

[Shibbs]

I'm all for a new snowboarding game, but this isn't that. This is a snowboard plus other thrills game, with all this blah blah features and the end result isn't winning the race, it's living. The reason people are pissed off at this is because it's not SSX, it's something new, so it really shouldn't be called SSX(Snowboarding Supercross).

 

I'm not saying this game will suck, but it won't be SSX, which is what the fans wanted.

[jayc4life]

I didn't even want a new SSX. Tricky and 3 are awesome, but what I really wanted was Sony to bring back Cool Boarders.

 

I'll make do with what I'm getting though, and at least give the game a fair shake closer to release, and probably a rental if I still think it'll be all right.

[Chronixal]

Whatever did happen to Cool Boarders? I remember playing 2 and 3 to death on the original Playstation and then it suddenly seemed to fall out of favour.

[Cyber Rat]

It looks like a Motorstorm snowboard game. I have no complaints about that.

[Chronixal]

I never played SSX so I can't comment on this too much but I would be prepared to give EA the benefit of the doubt as far as a series reboot goes. Hot Pursuit shows they're capable of doing it right.

[iLjaG]

I'm all for a new snowboarding game, but this isn't that. This is a snowboard plus other thrills game, with all this blah blah features and the end result isn't winning the race, it's living. The reason people are pissed off at this is because it's not SSX, it's something new, so it really shouldn't be called SSX(Snowboarding Supercross).

 

I'm not saying this game will suck, but it won't be SSX, which is what the fans wanted.

 

Thank God you've been to the future, played this game, and know everything about it to give us your opinion while the rest of us can only draw logical conclusions based on a 30 second clip we've seen.

 

@OP: Couldn't have said it better myself. Most of my remarks about the game thus far have echoed a lot of what you've said.

[Masonvrocks]

Not entirely true op. My main reason for raging so far is that it's different than old SSX and no, not just in terms of style but in terms of actual gameplay. The SSX facebook page specifically says there's courses on mountains all over the world which is what dissapoints me most. The one mountain many course layout of previous SSX games what made them so cool imo. So is that a fair complaint or am I just not giving the game a fair shake?

 

Also what are you talking about with On Tour? That game has an 80 on metacritic, not great but nothing to scoff at. It's probably my favorite game in the entire series. Best course design, best style, best music. The only problem was changing grabs from shoulder buttons to right stick.

[P4: Gritty Reboot]

 

The only snowboarding game that matters.

 

[c hoertjes]

I loved SSX Tricky and SSX 3, but this trailer was fucking laughably bad. I liked the moniker people were giving it, SSX: Black Ops.

[Heartless]

I can't judge the gameplay, but yeah, the trailer was pretty fucking laughable.

[staySICK]

trailer looked more like what I would imagine a current gen amped.

[Mister Jack]

As someone who never gave a shit about SSX one way or another, I gotta say that the teaser was hilarious to me. Snowboarding is very srs bsns, apparently.

[staySICK]

the whole idea of using real topography is kinda cool though.

[Masonvrocks]

I wasn't sure they were using actual topography, more like just the names. Unless people actually Snowboard the himilayas...

[staySICK]

at the VGAs they mentioned that they are using actual topography from mountains found here on Earth.

[Jon]

Not entirely true op. My main reason for raging so far is that it's different than old SSX and no, not just in terms of style but in terms of actual gameplay. The SSX facebook page specifically says there's courses on mountains all over the world which is what dissapoints me most. The one mountain many course layout of previous SSX games what made them so cool imo. So is that a fair complaint or am I just not giving the game a fair shake?

That's a fair complaint, as long as you remember that particular layout wasn't present in the first couple games.

 

Also what are you talking about with On Tour? That game has an 80 on metacritic, not great but nothing to scoff at. It's probably my favorite game in the entire series. Best course design, best style, best music. The only problem was changing grabs from shoulder buttons to right stick.

 

You're the first person I've seen who actually liked On Tour more than any other game in the series. Lots of people in the fanbase, at the time at least, felt it was a bit phoned in compared to SSX3.

[Heartless]

All of them felt phoned-in after SSX3 IMO.

 

Of course, now I guess the big complaints come from the fact that...it's not phoned-in enough?

 

I just really want to see a character list.

[iLjaG]

As long as it as Zoe and Psymon, everything will be alright.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

I'm all for a new snowboarding game, but this isn't that. This is a snowboard plus other thrills game, with all this blah blah features and the end result isn't winning the race, it's living. The reason people are pissed off at this is because it's not SSX, it's something new, so it really shouldn't be called SSX(Snowboarding Supercross).

 

I'm not saying this game will suck, but it won't be SSX, which is what the fans wanted.

 

where did you get this information from?

[HotChops]

I'm all for a new snowboarding game, but this isn't that. This is a snowboard plus other thrills game, with all this blah blah features and the end result isn't winning the race, it's living. The reason people are pissed off at this is because it's not SSX, it's something new, so it really shouldn't be called SSX(Snowboarding Supercross).

 

I'm not saying this game will suck, but it won't be SSX, which is what the fans wanted.

 

But see, we don't really KNOW that. All we got was a little teaser, and then some info off the website the next day. Ultimately, the problem here is that SSX was never a serious snowboarding game and that trailer didn't convey that tone at all.

 

Is it not possible though that it was just marketing? Games are frequently marketed based on what they think will capture people's interest and sell the game. CoD: Black Ops sold a bagillion copies the first week it was out. Is it any surprise then that the game's teaser felt like a CoD game?

 

Remember the trailer EA released of Mass Effect 2 before it came out? There was no discussion or difficult decisions in it. It was just Shepard, Grunt and Thane killing people and using biotic powers. If you knew nothing about the game, you'd think it was a futuristic CoD -- which is exactly what EA's marketers wanted, and guess what? The game sold a lot of copies to people who never played the first one. As much as I hated it, their marketing ploy worked.

 

The funny thing is that right now there's about million SSX fans who hate the trailer, but there's probably a million more who never played SSX and thought the trailer was cool. EA isn't concerned about the SSX fans. As far as they're concerned, we'll buy it as long as it's good; our purchase is almost assured. They want to go after a larger audience. Afterall, if the current SSX fanbase was enough, then they probably would've released a next-gen SSX years ago.

[iLjaG]

I don't get why people are saying the trailer was "realistic" or where the hell the CoD association comes from. I mean, realism? Who the fuck jumps out of a helicopter and skis down Mt. Everest? Right. NO ONE. Let alone dons a fly suite and glides off the fucking mountain. Nothing about this trailer was realistic. Nothing. And the Call of Duty reference? Some guy wears a printed ski mask and all of a sudden he's Ghost even though the exact type of skimask Ghost wears WAS AVAILABLE AS AN ITEM IN SSX3 5 YEARS BEFORE MODERN WARFARE EXISTED? It makes me want to punch a baby.

 

Sure it might be realistic in the sense that it's real mountains, but that's about as "realistic" as a Tony Hawk game (do you see anyone doing 2160s at the X-Games?). SSX has always been about batshit insane snowboarding, and this trailer looked to be the same. Just because you didn't see a neon pink grind rail in it doesn't mean it's not going to be SSX.

[c hoertjes]

Most people were saying those games b/c the trailer made it look like some generic, shitty action game with a little snowboarding thrown in.

[iLjaG]

I completely agree the "tone" of the trailer was all wrong, but I don't think most people can see the forest through the trees. A lot of poor assumptions being made with little to go off of; And most of what we've seen is being ignored because of it's style and not it's content.