There are very few games that have come out which I will play until my thumbs are practically bleeding. SSX is now at the top of that list. In less than a week I’ve logged some 30
hours in the game and my thumbs are brutally dry and chaffed, but I can still raise them for two thumbs up. SSX is one of those games where I say I’ll play for X amount of time and then when I look up, 10X that time has passed.
SSX is a long time favorite of mine. I’ve always liked the over-the-top, arcade style snowboarding of the series. This time round, EA Sports went out and tried to top themselves. How do you do that? You find the biggest, steepest mountains in the world, the most dangerous environments on the planet, and you snowboard down them.
That’s exactly the deal with SSX. There are nine deadly descents around the world, each with its own particular brand of human killing environment like thin air, massive drops, sheets of ice and numerous obstacles. For each, you’ve got your own little helper, Oxygen tanks, wingsuits, ice axes, body armor and pulse goggles, each for its own purpose.
The nine areas in the game are the Rockies, Patagonia, Siberia, Alaska, Himalayas, Antarctica, Alps, Africa and New Zealand. There are a total of 153 drops though it is not uncommon for several drops to use the same slope.
Gone are the on-rails days of snowboarding yore where there was just one track to use. Now, the mountains are more open and you can follow the clearly marked trail, and nab some pieces of flare (no really, they used flares as markers), or you can find your own path down the mountain. It all depends on what kind of run you’re on.
