SSX On Tour

"A Near-Console Experience"

I've always loved the SSX games. SSX 1 was the first game I ever played on the PS2 and I played it religiously. Tricky I missed because I didn't have enough money to buy it and never got around to getting it. I did rent it though and it was fun. SSX 3 I got for Christmas and I fell in love with the series all over again. On Tour I got for the PS2 two months after it came out because I saw it previously played for a great price. I fell in love with it as well, although not as much as I did when I played 3. So here we are. SSX On Tour for the PSP. I bought it because I knew that it wasn't OT for the console, but rather On Tour's style fused with tracks from SSX 3. The result is very good, and close to the console games. Lets look a little bit closer now, shall we?

GAMEPLAY -

Same as the console game (On Tour). You're on a leader board that ranks all these other snow boarders, with your name at the bottom of the list. The objective is to get medals in Tour events to increase your standing. Tour events include racing, big air, and slopestyle. Since Skiing is now in the game, there are those same events for skiing as there are for snowboarding. Unlike the console game they are both implemented in the same Tour mode, so you can do both to add to your overall medal total.

Racing is just what the name implies. You race down certain tracks and try to beat other racers. Sometimes you're on the course with the others, other times you're on the course by yourself trying to beat a time. You can still hit the other racers by pressing L and R (guess which button makes you hit which direction). You can still boost, but the game doesn't really capture the same feel of speed that the console game does when you boost, it comes fairly close.

Big Air is where you go on courses that are fairly shorter than the ones for Racing and Slopestyle, but those courses are designed to give you 'big air', so that you can rack up those trick points. Your boost meter will fill up quickly and when it does you can do uber-tricks that take a longer time to perform, but give you a much larger score.

Slopestyle is where you go down the longer courses and try to get large amounts of points in order to get a gold medal. Although you do have to reach the finish line before time runs out.

You can also do challenges. Which is where you have to do certain goals, like jump through hoops, go down a track while keeping your air time below a certain amount of seconds, or handplant certain logs for example.

Unlike the console game your stats go up automatically. The only options you have that make a difference to your ability are clothes and boards/skis, which you unlock more of while you play that add 1 or 2 points to certain stats.

In the On Tour console game you customize your character when you start the games by selecting different faces, hair, etc. The PSP game doesn't have this, instead you just pick whether you'll be a male or a female in the beginning. This may turn off some people who really like the idea of creating a player from the ground up that we're starting to see a lot more of in console games like the recent Tony Hawk games and yes, even the console version of SSX On Tour.

Also, to allow this game to run so smoothly, apparently they made the courses a little bit smaller, and cut off a few of the side tracks. Plus you can't go down the entire mountain in a single run like you could do in SSX 3 and OT for the consoles.

The important thing about the gameplay is that it's like the console games, and that's a very good thing.

9/10

CONTROLS -

SSX is a series tailor made for a home console system, primarily the PS2, since it uses a lot of buttons at once. The PSP game amazingly incorporates everything that the console games could do (well, SSX 3, not OT), although it ends up hurting the game in the end.

You move by using the analog stick, and you prewind jumps by switching to the control pad. Which is like the console games and actually works a bit better here since the stick and pad are so close.

While the control layout is different than console games due to the lack of buttons, it all generally works after some getting used to. Except for two problems, which I will explain right now.

Square is used to boost as well as do a grab trick, which can create problems if you're not careful. See, if you are going down a track and your holding the boost button, but hit a small bump that makes you jump a little, you will change from boosting to doing a grab if you don't let go before you hit the bump. This can cause you to fall down. It's fairly easy to avoid this though if you're being careful, but it's still annoying and hurts the gameplay a bit.

My second big problem is that Triangle is a grab button, BUT, you also have to press and hold it in order to do a board press (it's like the manual in the Tony Hawk games, it allows you to string a line of tricks together to get an extra combo score which really helps in Slopestyle). This is very similar to the square button problem, but I find is to be a bit worse. It's worse because unlike boost, once you start a board press, you'll want to keep it going and you can't stop doing it for too long, or else you lose your combo. So when you are doing a press and you're going down a hill, if you hit one of those small bumps, you'll automatically do a grab trick and fall if the jump's not high enough, thus ending your combo and losing your combo score. It's hard to be careful about it as well, since your concentrating on not falling down from the press. If you do see a small bump coming and let go of the press to get past the bump, you may still lose your combo score as well if it takes to long to get past that bump.

There is another control setting though. But it's much more uncomfortable and I find that it doesn't work all that well.

Okay, so you may be saying something like, "it's a portable game, what do you expect? They made do with what they had." This is sort of true. But like I said, in their attempt to make us be able to do absolutely everything that you could do on a console game, they didn't take into consideration that it may end up hurting it in the end. They should have taken out something minuscule. Like maybe the hitting. You don't NEED to be able to hit other racers, and with the extra buttons they could have switched the board press button to L making it MUCH easier to do it.

Other than those two big problems, the controls work very well, and it feels like the console games.

7/10

PRESENTATION -

On Tour for the PSP uses the same menu style that the console game does, since it has all these weird sketches that look like they were drawn by someone in high school. It actually adds to the personality of the game so it's a good addition.

It also features the same soundtrack that the console game has. But for some reason doesn't allow you to take songs off the playlist that you haven't listened to fully yet.

8/10

GRAPHICS -

The game generally looks great. The character is smooth and the animations look awesome. Although it does have this grainy look to it. There are these weird specs covering the screen, they aren't really noticeable unless you're in a dark area, and they don't really hinder your view of anything. It's hard to explain. Other than that, the visuals are very impressive.

There isn't really slowdown either. It might stutter slightly when the song changes sometimes, but that's it.

8/10

SOUND -

Like I said, it features the same soundtrack as the console game. Each song sounds great and is a welcome addition to the game. Almost each song sounds like it belongs there and if you don't like one then you can take it out (after listening to it entirely once for some weird reason).

The effects sound great as well. Every sound was brought over to the PSP flawlessly.

9/10

REPLAYABILITY -

Plenty of challenges and Tour modes to keep you busy and it's all great fun. You unlock new boards, ski's, and clothing as you go along. You can also unlock other boarders as well. There's also multiplayer to keep you busy.

8/10

OVERALL -

SSX On Tour for the PSP is a very good game. It feels like an SSX game, and plays like an SSX game. Everything seems a little scaled back though, but not very much and not enough to truly hinder the gameplay. You just need to look past a couple of its shortcomings, which is generally easy to do, although fairly hard for those two control issues. If you like the SSX series, and don't mind that the game uses tracks from SSX 3, then you should definitely play this game. If you're looking for a good snowboarding or skiing game for the PSP then look no further. It's not a system seller, but it IS just as fun as the console games.

8.2/10

Rounded: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/06/06