SSX Blur Review

The truly frustrating part about SSX Blur, though, are the slalom challenges. Carving between flags is made nearly impossible, because the flags are positioned too close together to weave around in succession. Inconvenient bumps are frequently placed right before a flag, too, causing your character to bounce out of control and miss four or five flags in a row. It isn’t the fault of the nunchuk but rather the fault of some pretty unforgiving and stiff level design. As such, tournaments that include a slalom are to be feared and avoided if at all possible.

On the other hand, race and slopestyle events are fine. Races are filled with plenty of shortcuts and boost tokens and now include the option to hurl snowballs at the competition by holding B and shaking the remote. Pelting someone with a snowball right before they go off a jump is highly entertaining. Competing snowboarders are no pushover, either. While Peak 1 is a breeze (probably to help players cope with the new controls), later levels demand that you know the best routes and land every major jump. Nothing is terribly difficult (except for those damn slalom challenges), but you will definitely spend a lot of time at this game if you hope to master every event and challenge and collect the hundreds of tokens lying around in free play.

There is also a two-player mode to help pad the game if building up each character’s stats gets old. Split-screen suffers from some slowdown and graphical anomalies (like a blue vortex that periodically appears in the distance) but holds up well enough to be a selling feature. It’s not like there are a lot of good simultaneous two-player Wii games out there, anyway. All the race and slopestyle levels in the one-player mode make it over unscathed, as well, so there’s little reason to complain. Online isn’t going to happen just yet, people.

SSX Blur also impresses from a technical standpoint. Don’t be fooled by the ugly screenshots on the back of the box. These are the slickest graphics on the system yet, the first step in making the Wii “next-gen,” after all. The visuals have a very soft feel and pack a lot of detail, in texture and animation. Blur goes for style over realism, though, which may deter some. The characters look more like kids, now, and the menus are brightly labeled like a TV show from the 70s. Blur also doesn’t feature any licensed music. Whoa, wait a minute, this is EA we’re talking about! Crazy, I know, because this wholly original soundtrack, consisting of great electronic mixes that dynamically change depending on how well you do, is among the best on Wii.

Final Comments

I do like SSX Blur, but I hesitate to call it a better game than previous SSX outings. While the controls definitely offer a unique challenge and can be very rewarding, sometimes you just want to be lazy and play a relaxing snowboarding game. SSX Blur is not relaxing. It will have you on the edge of your seat, flailing your arms around like an idiot, occasionally cursing about how you can’t get an uber trick to work or how the slalom races are unfair. Like most Wii games so far, there’s a lot of room for improvement, but I’m still going to recommend this one to fans of extreme sports games. There’s plenty to do, carving feels great, and, at the very least, you’ll enjoy the music and visuals.