SSX Blur

"I love my Wii, but this game sure doesn't do it any favours...fans of SSX should steer clear of this one."

Years ago, when I bought my launch day PS2, there was a little game on the demo disc called SSX. I played this demo more than any of the games I'd bought with the machine and at the end of a week, bought the full game. I've been a stalwart fan of the SSX series on the PS2 and have played every one of the series, but now it's been released for the Wii, I have to wonder how EA could get it so wrong.

Graphics 6/10

A bright and colourful front end looks typically SSX. The pointer controls however are a bit fiddly and seem to 'stick' when choosing your character, all stylised versions of old characters with a few new ones. But it's at the menus that Blur's first flaw becomes apparent. The text is so small that you are constantly squinting at the screen to read the little messages on the loading screens.

Nice touches are that the snow now falls all the time, which is pretty, and also sticks to your boarder's clothes when they take a tumble, gradually peeling away as they slide downhill. The glare of the sun has long been a feature of many games, but in Blur there are moments where it will literally blind you, making the track and obstacles all but invisible for a second or two, which in SSX is all it takes to crash out.

The characters seem less detailed to me, and hardly distinguishable from each other, which is a shame, as the individual personalities and rivalries are one of the factors that have driven previous instalments. With Blur, they're all pretty much silent avatars.

Sound/Music 2/10

The first major failing. Since the beginning of the series, the tunes have been instrumental in capturing the spirit of each game. Fans will argue over which is the best (for me SSX 3), but Blur is most definitely the worst. Tracks by established artists are out and bland rock is in. I cannot begin to tell you what a let down the music is in this game.

The idea is that the longer you go without falling and perform tricks in a chain, the more the music will build up. Well, it only takes a few yards without crashing to get the music up to full tempo, but then you'd be forgiven for crashing deliberately just to earn a few seconds' worth of silence. It's ear-achingly dull stuff.

Perhaps as this is a Wii only game, it wasn't worth spending the money to get proper music in, but this omission is a real own-goal from EA and totally destroys the atmosphere of the game.

Controls 4/10

As with all Wii, games the controls are really what matters. Someone should have told EA.

You steer, carve, boost, jump, grab and balance with the nunchuck, the secondary controller. This is kind of fine, until you get to the first slalom event. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but a slalom should be a fast-paced, bare knuckle ride, whizzing in and out of gates until glory is yours at the finish line. In Blur, you have to hold back on the brake button the whole time, whilst twisting the nunchuck in ever more exaggerated moves...and you'll still miss most of the gates. This makes the slalom events (of which there are plenty) a real grind, instead of the speed events they should be.

You also jump by jerking the nunchuck upwards. This is the first Wii game I've played where I seriously have to call the responsiveness of the tilt sensor in the nunchuck into question. You could give yourself a black eye trying to lift it sharply enough to jump in this game.

Want to boost? Your PS2-trained brain will tell you it's controlled somewhere on your right hand, and naturally go for the B button on the remote. Sadly, this will result in a snowball being flung. Z is where the boost is at, and it feels totally counter-intuitive. OK, maybe new people to the series won't find this, but it annoyed the hell out of me.

So onto the tricks, and this is where you eventually get to use the remote, the supposedly primary input of the Wii. Gone are the mind-bending and back-breaking moves of the past and in come tame jumps and limited movement.

To grab your board, you press Z and then tilt the nunchuck - but doesn't that control your movement? Not in the air, my friend. I want to spin sideways! A quick side to side motion of the remote will do this easily. But what about 'diagonal' (for want of a better word) jumps? Flick side to side, then up and down. Smooth it's not. And it may look like you're in the perfect position to land - but you won't, not without tapping the A button first to get your board underneath you...even if it already is.

This tapping A also removes some of the skill from SSX. Previously if you tried to sneak in just one more front flip and ended up with a mouthful of mountain, you learned from experience and played it safer the next time, or increased your stats to improve. In Blur, if you can see that you're not going to make it, just tap A and you're fine. It's more than a simplification: it's a get out of jail free card that the series can do without.

Lastly the Uber-tricks. Listen, I've played SSXs for a long time now and completed 90% of what there is to do in each game, but I've yet to pull off a single Ubertrick in Blur. You have to point at the TV with the remote and draw the shape that flashes at the bottom of the screen. Not the Uber you want to pull off, the one the game has decided you should do. But it won't work, and there's no indication of where in the drawing you got it wrong either, or even any indication that the game has picked up on the fact the you are attempting an Ubertrick. This is incredibly frustrating. The poorly-written manual seems to suggest that you need to collect 20 icons of each trick before you can perform it. Where's the fun or point in that?

On the upside, recoveries seem much quicker, although even then, previous instalments of the game put you back onto a 'safe' bit of track if you crashed too hard. Blur puts you straight back to just before the obstacle you hit in the first place, which often means several restarts just to get back far enough to avoid whatever it was you hit. Annoying? I should coco.

Lifespan

Can't give a rating for this because I have now given up on the game after unlocking just three tournaments. It's just too unresponsive to persevere with. My impression is that the mountain is more confusing. It's not clear which events are trick events and which are races. Rewards for completion of events are also unpredictable, and I personally found it extremely difficult to upgrade my character through winning said events.

Conclusion

Overall, a really disappointing addition to the series. It looks okay, while nothing spectacular, but the appalling controls and general fuzziness of the interface and menus make this one game that must be avoided.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/26/07