The Platinum Edition: SSX Tricky

During the early 2000s the world was in love with extreme sports, and every single sport got a video game. One video game series I was quite taken with was SSX, and in 2001 a sequel was made called SSX Tricky, and I was hooked just from the first video I saw, and the hype continued with all its advertisements. Till eventually I got my hands on the game as able to play it, complete it and master it. Today I will be looking back at this now twenty-year-old game.

SSX Tricky (2001) PlayStation 2, Xbox & GameCube 

As this is a sports game there really isn't a story to be had here. It has a very simple premise, pick a character max out their stats and unlock all the characters, costume, boards, and courses. You can do this with one character, or all twelve characters, which I did back in the day.

SSX is a snowboarding game so of course you’ve got to do some snowboarding. It isn’t a snowboarding simulator, it has fairly straight forward controls. You use the left stick to move, the D pad to pre-wind your trick spin. One button to jump and use the shoulder buttons to grab the board in various combos. As simple as that, but you figure out how to do it eventually.

The game gives you four different modes to choose from, Freeride, Single Event, World Circuit, and Practice. Freeride allows you to pick a course and just go down it for fun without any computer characters to get a feel of the track. Practice gives you the chance to practice tricks before you try them on the courses. Single event is playing one event that is taken from the world circuit. World circuit is where you would pick a character and try for medals, the more medals you get the more you unlock in the game.  

The two form of game play come in to two events, race, or show-off. However, just because you choose a race doesn’t mean all you have to do is just race down a mountain you still have to trick to get boost to help you win the race. While show-off events are trick based events that are about getting as much air and points as you can in specific course. The thing that will get you these points are of course the games main hook, the Uber Tricks.

This gives the player to the chance to perform tricks that, let’s just say defy the law of physics and gravity in most cases. Pick and event, trick to get boost, once you max out your meter you get TRICKY, and then you can pull of an Uber trick. Each character has their own signature trick, which can only be done by them on their preferred type of board. Some are just plan sill and some would never happen in a million years. Such as the Soul Grind and Worm Air. When you do enough Uber Tricks you get a super boost and let’s not forget you get to hear Run DMC’s Tricky when you are tricky.

Another aspect of the game which was give more importance from the previous game is the friend and enemy meter. If you choose to knock down another ride for instant boost it has a karmic effect on the game going forward. Constantly knock down a character and that character will have more hatred towards you, and then they will try and knock you down whenever you pass them. While your friends will help knock down any enemies you have the course. Of course, if you knockdown a friend they won’t take it well and soon you could have nothing but enemies as you ride.

There are twelve playable characters which must be unlocked for you to play as. Each has a different stat, depending on speed, tricks stability and so on. Each character is from a different country in the world. Each has their own in game background and story if you want to delve into why a character is the way they are. Which is a nice touch and shows there was thought to each of the characters. While some of the characters are voiced by celebrities, which was an oddity for the time, but still nice to have here, even though there isn’t a lot of dialogue. My personal favourites are Elise voice by Lucy Lu, Kaori and the UK’s own Moby Jones. Due to regional differences Mac was replaced with Marty in the PAL region, only for Mac to come back next game.

Each character has a trick book and completing each chapter in the trick book unlocks a new board for each character. When you have completed the trick book is gives you the uber board which pretty much gives your character max stats when playing. Just a shame the board in just plan silver. Which I know at the time we all thought silver was the colour of the future. It was so satisfying when I revisited the game to see that all characters had trick book completed. Giving me a real sense of how much time I devoted to this game.

The courses on this game are the same as the previous game, only with two new tracks added to game. Meaning there is only eight main courses, and two course that can only be played in show-off and freeride. These courses are still fun and have had some changes from the previous game to help incorporate the use of Uber tricks. It’s just a shame three isn’t more as you must race and do tricks on all these courses in the world circuit.

Just like the tricks in this game some of the courses are just as absurd. The Tokyo Megaplex would be a course that could never exist in real life, unless the company wanted to go bankrupt due to the number of lawsuits. However, I like my video games unrealistic, so I do enjoy the giant pinball like set up of the course, and the giant fan at the beginning of the course to help you get that, Big Air Bonus! While Aloha Ice Jam is just crazy because who would think that you could snowboard in the climate of Hawaii?

The soundtrack of the game was somewhat of let down as it mostly consists of sounds from the previous game just brought over to the new one. Which is fine, as I got used to them from the first, but it would have been nice to have some new sounds from this game, except from a new menu sound and maybe one or two new tracks. As I say, it’s nice we do its It’s Tricky here so I can complain too much, as it could have just been used as marketing gimmick.

One thing that does make me wonder is the voice over for this game. I assume the voice is meant to sound sexy, but my question is why? I can only guess it’s meant to be there for the men and teenage boys, who were the demographic back then, but sometimes it just sounds like to me, she is trying to sound horny. While Rahzel seems to be have been brought in to add a few more lines from the previous game.

When I look at SSX Tricky I must remember it is the second game in a six-game series. As it shares so much from the previous game it could be easy to see this as the first game in the series, but it does improve on a lot from the previous game. Such as fleshing out the characters more, given more tracks, and adding the uber tricks. I feel like this was where a lot of people started with SSX as it was the first to go multi-platform. When I look at games further down the line I can see where they have improved on certain aspects of the game, while also taking away certain things too.

In future games the soundtrack is vastly improved thanks to the EA track system a lot of EA Games use. Using a lot of different artist and different greens of music to help create a wider sound. While it also improves on being able to hold uber tricks, or how they could be done a little more realistically. While other games have sorted out how to add more courses to the game, by creating course specifically for racing and show-off. While also how to incorporate open land into the main game play. At the time I didn’t know any of this would come, and still enjoyed the game, and spending a couple hours with to write this I still enjoy it now. It’s still a good game, and one it would love to get a HD Remaster, but fat chance as we haven't got an SSX game for ten years. I love this game because I remember what it means to me back down, and I appreciate it now as there aren’t many snowboarding games around now. But it was a fun game to put god knows how many hours into.

I feel this game is great for anyone who would like a fun snowboarding experience. For me it holds up like some of the earlier Tony Hawk games (I’ll do one in 2022). Which the critics also seemed to enjoy the game with its 92% on Metacritic, for the PS2 version. This was a case of the sequel just being better, but does one its sequels succeed it? Who knows, but with the SSX 2012 turning ten next year maybe I’ll check that out next.

Xo FabEs