SSX Review

Love EA sports or hate them, they've succeeded here. SSX, the fifth game in the SSX franchise, is an amazing sports game and playing it brings joy when you pull off an impressive move successfully. It's cheap, worth it, and a fun experience.

Characters are little, though. Whilst it does feature the classic characters such as Zoe Payne and Moby Jones, it misses out on Jean-Paul, Nate Logan, Broderick, and so on. Yet, each character is different and they all have different signature moves, making you have your favorites. It may be a small handful, but its a good handful in that. Its also a little thing, you'd be having so much fun you wouldn't care about your character for the most part.

The music depends on what you like. It fits the game perfectly, but is mainly electronic, dubstep, dance and so on. I'm fine with it, but some may argue that its annoying. Suit yourself. But, a song they could've added yet missed out is Skrillex - Cinema. It fits with the snowboarding greatly.

Snowboarding is fun and fast-paced. Despite going onto rails slowing your momentum, you generally speed across snow, over ramps and up ice, doing impressive tricks and signature tricks along the way. Eventually, you will go "Tricky", and have a cool orange glow. I don't exactly know the full effect of Tricky, so if any SSX fan wants to point it out in the comments, I'd be grateful. Anyway, when you do tricks you really have to focus, because the lower you are the more you bite your fingernails hoping to nail a huge trick. If its designed to be that way, they executed it amazingly here.

The only issue with this is that, even though you can rewind, it costs a lot of points. The bigger the trick, the more points you lose. I once lost over a million points over a huge jump trick, which is quite frankly unfair in my eyes. But, rewinding isn't necessary. Only if you die do you have to do it. Yet, making rewinding only usable a few times is unfair. If you don't use it, you don't even think that it needs to be there. There should be checkpoints, not score-crushing rewinds for deaths.

For those that care, graphics are delicious. The snow looks amazing when you've been over it, the lighting being the highlight (especially with the flares in the dark), and I haven't encountered any audio faults whatsoever so far. Writing is decent too, something not usually achieved in sports games. The only thing that would make the graphics even better is if they went for cell-shading, like in the fps delight, Borderlands 2. Now that would be some impressive stuff.

Level design is brilliant. They throw in plenty of things to use for tricks but also plenty of hazards in survival levels. Even the ice, something I usually hate, is designed in a great way that is a reasonable challenge to the common gamer. Ridernet allows some great fun with rivals and multiplayer, along with the singleplayer races having intelligent but fair AI. It all adds up near perfectly.

The shop allows you to buy reasonable priced gear that is all great. Rare stuff makes you feel like a pro and is fit for one, whilst boards and gear are awesome to get. You even get some achievements for buying them, which is a great idea in the game. You fairly get a lot of money rewardingly, allowing you to unlock races in a steady time without having to farm early missions to get the stuff you want. They hit the nail on that part of the game.

Race lengths are usually aced. Survival missions may be long, but because of that, they challenge you in a good way. Usually though, they last a good two minutes whilst presenting a decent challenge, be it tricks, race, or anything else that SSX has to offer. Its not dragged on nor a short experience, yet you'll be itching for more despite the time being well-balanced.

Want some challenges? Theres plenty to invent. Its fun to do. Go upside down and spin before doing two backflips, jump over the helicopter propeller, go under on over a fellow player whilst doing a frontflip or spinning 360 degrees, there's plenty of little fun things to do in a race, so much you could half of the Bible with ideas for tricks. Its all great.

Finally, just a little thing. In the collectors edition, a 2D version that would be kinda like Sonic would be AWESOME. Just sayin'.

Fun: 9. Freaking amazing fun, with adrenaline rush and the music bringing excitement.
Characters: 7. Has classic characters that are executed well, but misses out on many characters from the previous games.
Controls: 9. Easy and fun controls is what SSX 5 nails.
Sound and Graphics: 9. Awesome graphics and good fitting music, it only would be better if it was cell shaded.
Writng: 9. Little, but well thought out lines and well voice-acting will not dissapoint.

OVERALL RATING: 9/10, aka 4.5 stars.