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| SSX Blur | | genre |
| Racing | | date | | Out now! |
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SSX Blur - Review ( cont'd ) | |
Written by Joe Hall |
You can glide down the mountain on your chosen method of “snowportation”, be it by snowboard or by skis,
and selecting which events you take part in as they appear in front of you. However, you can alternatively access
the menu and select the event from the map screen and be taken to it by helicopter. If you choose the
former option, as you board down the mountain you will find little tokens offering challenges for you to complete.
These will also give you points for the leader board, but not as many as competing in an actual race would.
Furthermore, you can increase your characters stats, enabling them to pull off tricks more quickly, go faster, turn
sharper and boost for longer. For instance, if you complete a race,
your character will gain a speed attribute, whereas completing a slopestyle event might reward you with an elevated
trick attribute.
The game displays a wide amount of events that are mostly exceptionally enjoyable experiences. The races are
high-speed battles of reactions and skills, while you hurtle down different courses, and by the end of the
game the whole mountain. These are the best part of the game and are extremely fun.
Other game modes include half pipe and big air are all about gaining a maximum amount of points while reaching the
goal before the time limit runs out. Slopestyle is more interesting, as it sees you collecting points
( by performing tricks, grinding on rails etc ) while Skiing / boarding down the mountain.
The worst mode by far though, is slalom. Slalom consists of you sliding down the mountain while weaving
in and out of red and blue flags. This is impossible to do at speed as the flags are so close together.
You have to come to a near complete stop to turn enough to reach the next gate. Slalom is slow and boring,
but following completing the event at the 100th try, you do get a certain sense of achievement.
The most exasperating feature of this game however, is Ubertricks. They are the most infuriatingly frustrating
maneuvers to pull off in gaming history. What you are supposed to do is draw a shape while your character is in
the air, whilst holding the A button. This sounds like quite a painless process, but since the game
demands for near perfect 'shapes', they prove 9 out of 10 times to be impossible to produce. You start out
with four Ubertricks, and can earn more by collecting little tokens around the mountain. This is a nice little
diversion, but in all honesty, unless you want to complete the game, you wont bother to actually go and look for them.
SSX Blur shows that the Wii can have competent graphics and good game play in the same package, and is capable of
taking parts of an old game and making them playable again courtesy of the Wiimote. It is one of the better
games on the Wii at the moment and well worth a play.
A solid racer, which despite being let down by
complicated controls, and reused tracks, proves to be an excellent amount of fun.
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