SSX Tricky

"Cool as now!"

This little game got me into sports game. I was sort of FREAKED out by them. "Ugh. Sports! I hate them in real life... Why should I like them in a console?" The real question is, WHY NOT. This game is simply a masterpiece. Put on your favorite gloves, pick a snowboard and join the party!

"This is gonna be very.... very, interesting." ~ Story
Basically, games like this don't have stories. This one doesn't either. A collection of people, pro snowboarders, are competing against each other. Each character has a backstory, though. I had fun reading them. I won't give this a rating, as I don't think it matters.
Score: None

"Sweet-er than CANDY!" ~ Music/Sounds/Voice acting
I was impressed by how nicely the music fits. Each track has around 3 music, which you can choose. The sound effects are almost real, you can tell that easily. "Final Symphony" is an amazing track, you'll absolutely love it, hopefully. <3 BUT... All this is nothing compared to the voice acting. Voice acting usually gets bashed in games in general. A few survive the trial. This one survives, and gets the gold. Each character has his and her own trademark voice, and each voice fits the character well and adds to his/her personality. Definitely, you will enjoy it. There's also three people who don't speak english, Kaori (my fave character :D) JP and Marisol, who are japanese, french and spanish, respectively. Even if you can't understand a word (Marisol does speak english, though), this adds to the characters's unqiue style. I'm serious, this is almost the best voice acting in any sports game. Additionally, there's a narrator/guy who comments about your tricks during each course. He's not annoying at all; actually, he makes the races heater. Wooohooo! And in case you hate him, you can turn him off. >=D But... how can you hate someone who praises you for doing a 180? XD
Score: 9/10

"Born to fly!" ~ Characters
Besides the voice acting, this is one of the great things in the game. There are around, uhm... I dunno, 12 characters or something. You unlock most of them by clearing stuff, and start off with three. Each character has his or her unique, special and absolutely impossible-to-confuse personality. I think EA did a great job on this. Racing games usually don't put so much time into characters. FURTHERMORE, each character has friends and rivals. And yes, that affects the races. A character who hates you and would probably pay to some Assasin to kill you will do about anything to knock you down and send you to the last place. Friends, on the other hand, are nice guys who let you do whatever. But if you hit anyone, and I mean ANYONE, and knock this person down, then they will follow you like little chicks to knock you down back. And they will want your soul. Literally. And if you manage to beat them, they usually have a talk with you, in which they express how angry they are. Just laugh at them. They are pathetic. >_> As a side note, each character has his or her different pros and cons. For examples, Luther is a stability king, but he's so big he's sort of slow. In direct contrast, we have Kaori, who is small and can perform amazing tricks in seconds! But she will fall down if there's a strong wind. These stats are determined, basically, by the kind of style the character has, and therefore, which board they use. The biggest challenge in the game is to clear everything with a long board-user (Marisol and Brodi). It's hard to perform long tricks, and 180's won't help, as you will have to turn around and that's not very nice.
Score: 10/10

"You think you can handle me?" ~ Controls
If your answer was "Heck, yeah!", then you will be needin' some practice. Sure, the basic controls are easy. Accelerate with A, jump with A as well, choosing direction with control stick... everyday stuff. But doing amazing, actually worthy tricks is heck hard. You have to use the normal, directional arrows for the best tricks. X can be used as well for turning in the air, and it makes for simple tricks. But sometimes your fingers will go "boom" trying to do some trick. There's something in this game called Trick Book, which has 6 chapters of 6 tricks each. You must do them all in order of Chapter to unlock cool stuff for your character. Note each character has their own Trick Book! I think I literally burned my fingers clearing them all. Good luck, though. The controls are NOT awesome, but they won't make you cry. Some people say this game stinks for the controls, but I think any good gamer can make it :D
Score: 7/10

"I'm so HOT!" (Even in snowy landscapes o_o) ~ Graphics
Verrry nice, but not astonishing or out of this world. The snow and effects are very well-made, though character models could have used some work. It's fun to watch Replays and seeing your character roll like a worm. I once made Seeiah almost touch her feet with her head. No, not the normal, front way. The BACK way. Owch. The lights effects, changing topic, look very nice, no complaints. And while there are some visual glitches here and there, is nothing that could harm you. If you aren't picky about graphics, then you shouldn't have any kind of problem.
Score: 8/10

"I like to party. Let's have some fun!" ~ Gameplay
Now, now, people. Usually, gameplay is the most important aspect in a game. To have fun and to be able to not try to eat your console out of hate. This game, people, won't disappoint you. Let's start off by the basics: There are THREE Game Modes. We'll separate 'em in sections:

Section One: Practice and Free Run (One or Two Players)- No game would be complete without this. Practice contains, basically... practice, yeah. You can also see your Trick Book and how to perform each trick here. In Free Run, you're free to do whatever you want. Two courses not avaible in normal mode are in here. Untracked is the first, and it's cool to death. As it name says, it's an UNTRACKED course. No limits, baby! The other one is Pipedream. If you like tricks and railing, you'll love this course. You can play two players, yes.
Section Two: Single Event (One or Two Players): Now, if you have a friend by your side, this is the option for you. Basically, free races with other player and competitors. You can set difficulty and stuff like that. There's two modes here: Race (duh) and Showoff. In Race, you sort of... race. Yeah. And in Showoff, you show off your tricks for points. Whoever gets the most points before the finish lines grabs the win. You must be thinking "Hey! What if I just stay in one place infinitely doing tricks? Hah hah! I'm a genius!" WRONG, SIR. The programmers thought about this, and absolutely pwned you by making you have to reach CHECKPOINTS every so often. If you don't get to the checkpoint in time, you're out. Bye, bye!

Section Three: World Circuit - One Player: Basically, here you unlock stuff, make your character go up in ranks make him or her kick huge butt by improving his or her skills. I found the Races far too easy, but the Showoff is a great challenge. Checkpoints are meanies, I tell ya. Note that to 100% our little game here, you must unlock everything for them, and thus beat this with each and all characters. I still haven't finished. It's a lenghty game, and never gets old. Well, maybe you will leave it in your shelf untouched for a month or two, but suddenly, you'll want to play again. And you'll get addicted to this once again =P You unlock characters's boards and ranks in here, while you unlock outfits by clearing the Trick Book. Also, each character has a Chrome Outfit, and you'll enjoy being semi-invisible.

The Tricky Bar: This is not a section, but it goes in the game in general. Besides all the features already described, there's a bar next to you in all races and Showoff levels. The point of this bar is to be able to do UBER TRICKS. To fill the bar, you must do a lot of tricks. Once that's done, you'll be able to perform an Uber Trick, giving you a LOAD of points. If you, by any chance, get to fall, though, your bar will decrease. The most pathetic falls might take out half or more of your bar. That's not nice. But... if you manage to do 6 Uber Tricks, the word TRICKY on top of the bar will be completely filled, and even if you fall a thousand times, your bar will continue complete. Nice for Showoff.
Score: 9.5/10

"Tanoshii!" ~ Unlockables
I have talked about unlockables all the time in this review. Basically, you can unlock boards (each is better than the last one), character ranks and, of course, outfits. And in the beginning, you'll also have to unlock the characters. You'll be spending a looOoOoOoOong time here. Oh, almost forgot: You must unlock the arenas, too. Mwahaha.
Score: 10/10

"I'm on top of the world!" ~ Replayability and such
Usually, sports games offer either little to no replayability, or a ton. Erm... This one is fun until you're 100% done, I guess. It's always fun when you have two players, too. I think it's all right.
9/10

Did YOU have fun? Should I rent or buy this game?
Personally, yes. I bought this game over four years ago, and I'm still not entirely done. Yeah, I sometimes get bored, but once I start playing again, I can't stop.
As for the rent/buy business, I'll recommend for you to first rent it, as there's always the possibility you will just dislike this game. But I recommend for you to try it. Really. It's very cheap nowadays (you'll be lucky to find it), so it will probably be worth your money. As a side note, there's also SSX On Tour and SSX3 for the GameCube. I haven't tried them, so I can't tell you if they are better or worse than this game. But this one, definitely, needs a place in your game collection.

Final Scores/Overall:
Music/Sounds/Voice: 9/10
Characters: 10/10
Controls: 7/10
Graphics: 8/10
Gameplay: 9.5/10
Unlockables: 10/10 <--- Believe it or not, this is important in sports games.
Replayability: 9/10
TOTAL: 8.9/10 -> 9/10

Thanks for reading! And as Elise would say... "Hey, I'll be waitin' for ya at the bottom!" (Thanks to the Elise Quote FAQ by FishEye for that one XP)

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/07/06