PAX Prime 2011 Hands-On: SSX - Preview
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 26 August 2011 / 3,951 Views
SSX is a franchise with a near and dear place in my heart. I spent hours my sophomore year in college playing the demo for SSX Tricky with my roommate, so we quickly went out and purchased the full game. Hours were then lost to its brilliant successor, SSX 3. Since then, there's been a dry spell. SSX On Tour was like SSX without the open mountain and with some horribly ugly menus. SSX Blur was a good game for the Wii, but not one that captured the core SSX gamer due to radically different controls.
Now comes the new SSX for PS3 and Xbox 360. On the one hand, I'm very excited for SSX coming to the HD era, but on the other hand I'm very skeptical of the new game. I'm hoping it will salve the SSX drought I've been feeling but I'm worried it won't live up to my high expectations. While the playable demo on the show floor of PAX Prime is still just a pre-alpha build, it's showing more and more of the classic SSX hallmarks we know and love.
This particular demo drops you from a helicopter to start your run down the mountain. This particular run isn't a very complex one compared to open sections we've seen in finalized SSX games, but it did have a few grindrails and a variety of jumps, valleys, and drops to throw down tricks on. This current demo is using a control scheme similar to the one used in Skate, though developer Andrew Terrett assured me this was used because it's easy for quick demos, but won't necessarily be the final control scheme used in the game.
We are looking into giving gamers multiple options, more on that as we figure it out.
On the bottom of the screen was a meter. This meter was tracking how many tricks I was able to successfully link together closely. After linking a handful together, the work "Tricky" started to flash, at which point all my tricks became über tricks and could be converted to super über tricks by depressing the right trigger while executing the trick. This was one of those classic SSX elements I was hoping to see. The über and super über trick are returning, though no word yet on the monster trick. The demo was generally fun, gave the same old sense of a large, explorable mountain with great tricks, though it doesn't yet have the flash and flair we're accustomed to in SSX.
They've promised three pillars with the new SSX game: Race It, Trick It, Survive It. While the first two are basic to SSX, the third is the new addition and again wasn't present in this demo, but I spoke more with Andrew Terrett about that.
...that’s you battling Mother Nature down these death-defying runs, stuff like trees, rocks, ice, whiteouts, below freezing temperatures. It’s really cool to see how those things have been put into the game and how you literally have to battle those elements.
I also wanted to piggy-back on the recent announcements of the 100,000 player Global Events and Ridernet that are being added to the game. I asked Terrett how 100,000 people could play at once in a game.
It seems impossible, doesn't it? You're going to do it in SSX...Global Events is exactly like it sounds. You'll be able to drop into an event on any of the mountains or any of the drops in the game...you jump into an event, any other people in the world could be in the same event, battling you at the same time. Not only are you battling the leaderboards, but in Global Events you're battling that guy right next to you. People will be phasing in and out around you as you go down the mountains.
Terrett also divulged more about ghosts in SSX, saying that if you set a particularly fast time or high score, you can earn in-game money as your friends try to beat you and fail against your ghost, even if you're not actively playing the game. He also confirmed that Eddie will ONLY be available as a pre-order bonus through GameStop. He is not unlockable in the game otherwise.
SSX will be hitting PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in January 2012.
