I didn’t like the trick system. Do tricks to earn boost so you can do better tricks so you can get more boost. Okay, great, so I just wait until my boost bar is full before using any? Okay then. It’s like how in Motorstorm using too much boost makes you explode but they give you no reason to ever abuse the boost so it’s never an issue. It’s half of an interesting mechanic.
Although I only played the demo, so maybe the full game did it better. But the demo was enough to convince me to stay away.
If ArsTechnica is right (http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/09/the-250-elite-microsofts-50-rebate-begins-now.ars), this is going to be bundled with 360 Elites in a month. A month later, you’ll find a gazillion of them on the used market for dirt cheap.
Better than burying them in a giant pit in New Mexico, I suppose.
Interesting, but like most people, I still want a real SSX for the new generation. I mean, they did sell well on the PS2, did they?
Did they?
From an recent interview with Alain Tascan from EA Montreal:
Q: Looking at some of your other franchises, are we going to see another SSX?
Alain Tascan: Ah, SSX. We have a big catalogue and we were talking about what people like. I think this is something we will look at in the future to see if it makes sense to revive the franchise.
Q: Well, SSX was a very popular franchise and has a lot of fans – at the moment do you think there’s sense in bringing it back?
Alain Tascan: It’s a little bit early to talk about it, but I feel… I know internally it is a franchise that people love because it was successful and good, and it reminds me of when we were young, and I feel if the market is there and is ready for a new one then we’ll consider it.
Q: Do you think the market is?
Alain Tascan: Ha ha. You want to get the information! I might tell you that some day!
Jeez, talk about speaking in riddles…
I rather see Amped 4. :\
Well, the part about it being pretty too early to talk about probably means that even if they do develop an SSX game, it’s in the early planning stages, and who knows if it will ever get off the ground? Btw that portion of the interview was right after they talked about Project Natal, so I think the implication was that SSX might be a good fit for a Project Natal game. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
I love me some SSX, but mimicking actual snowboard actions might not be as much fun.
Ooh Natal, eh? I can see some good uses for that, but what would the neighbors think when you’re pretending to snowboard in your house?
I would love to see a snowboard game that lets me freeride all the way down the mountain in any way I’d like with settings to adjust the traffic of other skiers and snowboarders around me.
Out of the SSX series, I only played SSX Blur on the Wii, which was terrible. The core snowboarding and basic tricks were fun, but there was no freeride option at all. It forced you to do races and other not-fun things as you went down the mountain. But when you weren’t forced to do lame things, the game was very nice and relaxing cutting through snowbanks and watching the scenery go by and listening to the sound of the snow.
Do any of the earlier SSX games, or Amped games have a “zen” mode? That’s how I feel when I actually snowboard, and it would be great to recreate that.
SSX 3 lets you use a helicopter to go right to the very top of the mountain and then ride all the way down to the bottom. Along the way, you can snowboard into obviously glowing pillars of light to do challenges, races, etc., or you can ignore them all and just go down the mountain. It was definitely my favorite game in the series. I especially love the top of the mountain which is free of markings and other things, and the sense of vertigo as you fall off cliff edges is palpable.
The original SSX and SSX Tricky have a track called “Untracked” which features a track with no markings where you’re just riding on the snow. But it’s a small part of the game.
I’m not sure what SSX On Tour had. I’ve heard that SSX Blur was the Wii version of SSX On Tour, kind of, so maybe it was similar to what you’ve already experienced.
SSX Blur had those glowing pillars, but they were extremely hard to avoid - and even when avoided it would put me in the event, anyway. SSX 3 sounds much better.
Skate is closer to that sense of zen, but there are way too many people that get in your way (and not adjustable). Also, Skate had an annoying tendency to make me crash on tiny lips of sidewalks and things that you couldn’t see.
I’d love to see a reinvention of snowboarding games like we saw with Skate!
Back to the thread’s subject, I’m guessing Pure isn’t very zen. Tricks on a noisy ATV? Ehhh…
You make a good point about Motorstorm, but from the brief time I’ve spent with Pure, it is a bit different. There is a negative side to waiting for a full boost bar. Lets say you’re approaching a big straightaway with a big jump in the center of the straightaway, and your boost level is at the second level out of three. Now, you could use your boost to go down the straightaway fast and then use the extra speed off the jump to do some nice longer tricks while still going fast, or you could wait until after you’ve jumped and boosted your boost bar to full. However, if you do that, you’re almost to the end of the straightaway now, and using the full boost bar at this point would be a bit of a waste since you’d have to slow down and turn. So you could wait until you hit the next straightaway instead. But meanwhile, if you’d taken the first option, you’d be ahead, and you’d already be on your way to filling the boost bar again, possibly all the way to full again by the time the next big straightaway comes.
So there is a full mechanic there, and I think using the system to its best potential involves knowing the course and knowing where the straightaways are.