SSX 3 Review

I’ve always been a fan of snowboarding games. I enjoyed snowboarding on my Sega Saturn with SSS, then on the PS1 with Cool Boarders, and then on my N64 with 1080 snowboarding. I remember renting that game a week end and finishing it, unlocking everything the game had. On monday, I went to the mall and bought the game and then played some more. When I had heard that a sequel to 1080 was coming on GameCube, I was extremely excited. I thought that it would be the greatest snowboarding game ever. But then, another snowboarding game caught my eye. I remembered it from when I had seen it on store shelves when PS2 was launched. Then, I had seen it’s sequel, but didn’t have any of the next-generation systems when it was released so I completely forgot about it later. That’s when they showed the 3rd one, and I was completely blown away. I always liked realistic games, but what I like the most are those games that take it to the next level, games like F-Zero, Rush, NBA Jam, you know, the games that are extremely exagerated and in which you can do almost anything you can in real life x 100. That’s what I like a lot about games, being able to do whatever I want, and that’s what SSX3 has brought me.

You start the game as one of 10 riders, some new, some from past games. You enter competitions, win cash, buy attributes to get better, get further into the game, and then become the king of the mountain. That’s kind of the basic stuff, what you should have in most snowboarding games. But in SSX3, you don’t only get a few races, you have 26 snowboarding events on 3 different peaks. That is completely insane! That is already enough to keep you playing for a very long time, but it’s still just the begining. The are 3 different modes of play. The first one is racing. You’ve got to be the first at the bottom, and you’re against 5 other riders. There are also challenges where you’ll be racing against an opponent, and even full peak races where you’ll be racing for over 10 and even 20 minutes without any loading between the tracks! Then, there’s freestyle. That’s where you have to perform all the crazy tricks found in this game to get he best score you can. There are 3 different freestyle events. The most popular one being the superpipe event, an extreme halfpipe where you’ll be jumping extremely high, even to some other halfpipes that are in the air! Crazy stuff I tell ya! Then, there are the big air events, a serie of insanely big jumps that doesn’t last very long, so you’ll have to perform your best tricks to get the biggest scores. The last one is freestyle runs, where you have to get to the bottom of a normal race, but making one extremely sick score! And finally, the last mode of play, freeride. If you just want want to explore and find the best shortcuts or collectibles from the game, that’s the mode of play to pick. These are the modes of play in Conquer the Mountain (or story mode if you like), but you can also just do single races or play with friends in the multiplayer mode.

So, as you progress through the game, you get money. With that money, you gain access to the second, and then third peak. Once you’ve done all that, the games over, right? Well, it actually isn’t! Each of the tracks has collectibles and big challenges. One of the goals in the game is to collect all the collectibles and finish all big challenges, and there are so many, you’ll spend hours just doing that. Those big challenges can be found anywhere on the track, and they ask you to do various stuff like get a really big score, do certain tricks, do certain jumps, jump through rings, then do it again in a certain time, etc. There’s a lot to do and with various difficulty levels. You also get a medal each time you finish a race, either bronze, silver, gold, and platinum. But those are attributed to you depending on your time and score, so you’ll have to do your best if you want to score those platinum medals, as they are not easy to get! And the more medals and collectibles you get, and the more big challenges you complete, the closer it brings you to completing each of the 3 peaks. Also, by completing races and winning cash, you can buy various stuff in the lodge like arts from the game, and pictures of all the stuff they sold that has something to do with the game like toys and cards and posters. There are also videos and cheat characters. One final thing; there are what EA calls career highlights. These are things you have to perform during races, spectacular things, like rail for over a hundred meters, or jump in the air for 8 seconds, do a chain of 100 moves in a combo, etc. And the more you complete, the more you’ll unlock stuff.