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Preview  SSX Tricky
- By Travis Coats


The first SSX was released on Playstation 2 and because of that I have never played it. We here at NSports cover only those games on Nintendo machines, and as such my first experience with the SSX series was with the new SSX: Tricky.

SSX: Tricky is a snowboarding game that (true to its name) is based on a very detailed trick system. Now the build that I played was pre-alpha, meaning that the game was riddled with bugs and lacking any sort of polish, but even at this early state the game shows enormous potential. There are so many features packed into this game that I literally stood listening to one of the developers explain them all for about an hour. Some of these features include…

12 Courses:
Apparently the majority of these courses are updated versions of last years SSX, which means nothing to me, as I have never played it. Still, through the glimpses of each course that I saw each of them seemed to have a distinct layout and functionality. Players are challenged with not only racing down steep hills and treacherous bumps, but also extreme and unrealistic terrain like snowboarding on a ski lift wire. Realism is not the name of the game however so this is not a problem.

10 or 11 Riders:
The number of available riders was different with every developer I asked so I could never figure out if it was ten or eleven. Regardless of the number, each rider has a distinct personality and style. This was actually my favorite aspect of the game since it was so easy to distinguish between each rider. One character in particular stood out above the rest. His name was Eddie and he was a trash talking type of guy with an enormous afro. One of the developers even jokingly commented that a lot of work had been put into making sure that Eddie’s hair had the correct physics. The funny thing is it actually appears that they did just that. Another neat aspect is that each character has his/her own personal theme music.

Rivalries:
Between the various characters there can develop rivalries or friendships. Apparently the friendships have no affect on the bearing of the gameplay, but a rivalry can make the game a bit more challenging. To create a rivalry with another character all a player has to do is assault the character in question. There is a move that players can perform that allows them to push other riders over while they are racing, and after repeated attempts of doing this the other character will get upset and become a rival. As I understand there are three different levels of rivalry and they seem to be cumulative. The first is limited to your rival simply insulting you. The second level involves your rival cutting you off and generally getting in your way on top of insulting you. The third and by far the most fun is when your rival becomes out right hostile and tries to attack your character, as well as insulting you and cutting you off. As you can imagine, having a rival would add considerable challenge to the game experience.

Ranking System:
In SSX: Tricky a ranking system has been implemented. There are ten different ranks that each character can receive. They range from the lowest being rookie to the highest being master. With each new rank characters will receive an improved board as a reward. Also for added depth, with every rank a player reaches a little cinematic will be played out, and when the master rank is attained a sort of mini-ending will be shown. The developers stated that they added this so players could feel like they had actually achieved something.

The Trick System:
This is the real meat and potatoes of SSX Tricky. As I understand it there are five different levels of tricks, and ten tricks in each level. Fifty tricks sounds good enough to me. As if that wasn’t enough, there will also be something called uber-tricks that can be performed when the characters adrenaline bar is fully maxed out. The adrenaline bar is a gameplay addition that is raised by performing one of the fifty normal tricks. Once enough tricks are executed an uber trick becomes available. It all sounds rather confusing on paper but seeing it in action seems to simplify it somehow.

DVD Extras:
For all three consoles there will be a DVD menu with extras such as a making of the game section, and things such as character art and the like. For the GameCube release however this menu will not be called DVD since the system does not support that format. Also with the GameCube’s excellent compression abilities there should be no problem fitting all of the extra content onto the 1.5 Gigabyte optical discs.

SSX: Tricky certainly looks like it will be the snowboarding game to beat on the GameCube this winter. In fact, with 1080: 2 a while away SSX: Tricky may be the only snowboarding game for Nintendo GameCube this winter. Which isn’t such a bad thing, as Electronic Arts seems to have a solid game on their hands.

- 7.27.2001