Edge: SSX review

At the turn of the millennium, the original SSX kicked off EA BIG’s run of high-quality egocentric sports titles, paving the way for the punishing thrills of NFL Street and the showboating silliness of NBA Street. The extreme snowboarding sim was the most universally accessible and embraced of the stable, delivering incrementally more ambitious sequels that didn’t stray too far from the original formula of big stunts, bold environments and solid mechanics. The outfits were eccentric, but the gameplay was robust – a happy marriage of style and function.

[Super_ike]

Wtf?! the reviewer should just go and play COD....5/10, seriously?

[Captain Qwark 9]

so every low review i have seen so far, including this one all have one similarity....they complain becuase its hard lmao!

i for one would give it points for that, i want to be challenged, i dont want to conquer every race the first time through. what is the point to ever go back if every course can be easily done in one run??? i have a good feeling this game will be nothing of a 9/10 for me considering the demo was perfection but lacked the difficulty i wanted. seems the full game has it :)

[Ares84HU]

I think the demo was difficult enough.

It is a good thing that the game isn't easy but what you see here is typical EDGE. They are the official trolls of video gaming in my eyes.

People should stop taking EDGE seriously, they don't know what they are talking about. Probably the worst publication right after HipHopGamer.

[Captain Qwark 9]

@ares...

i actually agree completely. they just rate games insanely low for hits. unfortunately it works becuase people see the low score then click their site and read their reviews all the way to try to figure out "why". normally i skip right over them but after playing the demo and thinking it was gold i was curious to see why they rated it so low. then seeing the only thing they really knocked it for was difficulty made me realize that as usual, they're reviews are worthless.

[ginsunuva]

@ Capt Qwark

Edge is a paper magazine so they dont need hits.

And secondly, edge scores by the REAL 10pt scale, where 5=average.
Others use 7.5=avg

[schlanz]

@gin

The real scale is 7.5=average. That is the the reigning paradigm. Edge and people like yourself are reading into averages too literally. Considering our school system in the US judges a 75% as average that's how we are trained to perceive a similar scoring scale. Right or wrong, that's the way it is, so just roll with it instead of being a pretentious little snob.

[CarlitoBrigante]

Wow people really think the new SSX is HARD????

Kids did you even tried the older SSX like SS Tricky or SSX3? Compared to them this new SSX is childs play!

Childish reviews like this makes me lose hope in humanity

[RockmanII7]

@schlanz Not everyone should be forced to conform to a 7.5 = average scale just because some US judges said so not everything revolves around the US. Edge is a UK magazine and in the UK the grading scale is 60%-70% = Average and the average Edge magazine review is a 6.3/100. And calling someone a pretentious snob for using a 5/10=average scale, really? Grow up.

[schlanz]

@rock

wow no wonder brits are so dumb, when they only get 60% of their test answers correct that is considered average?

by the way out of all the UK publications I could identify Edge has the lowest average score. For example Play UK and Games Master UK have averages over 70%. But aside from that, many US publications have averages in the mid 60s, simply because there are so many crap games out there.

But when we talk about average games and average students, we're talking about their being ordinary. Not amazing, not terrible. The average score for an entire publication does not mean games with that score are "average" games other than in an arithmetical sense.

[Surfaced]

Being someone who actually read the review.... I must say, it did not read like a 5.
I sometimes struggle to understand EDGE's grading philosophy.

[Bodster]

Regardless of the scores, I am picking this up. Used to play the older SSX games religiously and the demo is fantastic!

[Ilovetheps5]

The demo was amazing. I definitely don't see a 5/10 based on the demo. As soon as I can afford to buy it, I will. It was quite fun and I haven't had a good snowboard game in quite a while.

[redDevil87]

wth... either people really enjoy it or they dislike it a lot :/

[pr0digyZA]

Some good old school SSX. great fun and addictive with some challenge. Takes a while before you do big numbers. Can't wait to get it.

[Dazel]

If he finds getting Tricky so hard and fleeting maybe he should practice a bit more. There are plenty of YouTube videos showing folks in Tricky all the way down the slope! Reviewers really need to spend time playing a game before they write such drivel. SSX is a game you learn to master much the same as a racing game, learn the courses and find the best places to score big.

It's reviews like this that give the whole process a bad name!

[Chuk5]

The reviewer seriously just sounds like he's punishing the game because he isn't good at it. Tricky isn't superhard to keep up, and the course design isn't easy to run through in one go because of all the ways and routes you can use to optimize race times and trick totals.

He just sounds like a result of the increasing challengelessness of games today.

[blackmamba707]

they see me rollin, they hatin...

[LoLZoRz]

I can't stand this, how can these guys review games? He rages because a game is challenging? since when a challenge is considered a flaw? What the f*ck is wrong with today's gamers.

fu*k them, seriously.

I find the demo challenging in the beginning, not hard, challenging. as soon as I played it a little more I became better and it became easy. How can this guy call himself a "gamer"? how can I adjust after a little bit of practice and this guy can't? he's clearly not intelligent based of this review.

[Captain Qwark 9]

spot on bro. i love my games easy to play, hard to master. i raced through the demo runs easily but it took many tries to get gold and thats a plus in my book. i must have raced jt2 about 60 times trying to get under 2 min.. i still cant get gold on bull either. but to me, thats just more reason to keep playing, not get pissed and tell somebody its a shitty game becuase im terrible at it.

im glad the amped up the difficulty makes the games much much better imo. when i was growing up and gaming almost all games were a challenge, it was something not only expected but appreciated. these days, its just sad how few people like to be challenged.

[LoLZoRz]

yeah, the more challenging is the more satisfaction you'll get when you beat it. and SSX isn't unfairly challenging either so you must rage, it's your own fault if you can't pass a stage.

[ilovemyps3]

bad score..

[SuperStrokey1123]

You mean bad review right?

[portugamer]

seeing edge give low scores to good games shouldn't be strange to anybody, but after several 8's and 9's this game got, a 5/10 seems a bit "extreme" to me.

between a flash game for ipad/iphone, that will last 1 hour, and will still score a 8 or 9/10, and this game, that gets a 5/10, it means i should choose the flash game ?

i think we all became spoiled guys. just 10 years ago, we were playing games with ugly textures and aliasing. just before ps3 and x360, we were playing low res games, with limited colors and effects, not so great AI, etc etc.

today, we have incredible games, quality and quantity, and only because it's a bit difficult, or there is a few textures popping in, or a few torn frames during the whole game, or because the game only lasts 11.2 hours, instead of 12, and because the game has 5 less perks than X or Y game, or because the game reminds Z game, well, the game will score a 6 or 7.

ok, this is a new gen, our consoles cost a lot of money, and we want to buy the best games for our money. we arrived to the point where we will only buy a 9/10 game, and skip all the 7-8/10 games.

we don't realize what we have been losing, by skipping these many games. can we say we are smart ?

and about scores. take a 4/5 score. in %, it goes from 61 to 80%. as a 5/5 game goes from 81 to 100%.

so, if a website scores a game 4/5, it means that it's a great game. but this 4/5 may mean a 61%. WOULD you buy a 61/100 game ?

i honestly think websites should stop giving scores to games, and instead, just say "what is great", "what is good", "what we didn't like" and "what we hated".

then, it's up to us to just read it, and analyse if it can fit our tastes, and if we can live with the negative stuff.

and let's not forget when you review a game, besides it qualities or faults, there's still the "i like/dislike this kind of games". For example, i love playing pool,in real live,so, if i have to review a pool game, like, the excellent Hustle kings, on PSN, and now Vita, since i know the rules, and know how the real thing works, i will certainly forgive some minors faults, when comparing them to the whole experience i get. But someone who doesn't like pool, the guy simply will take this and that small faults, and will score it a 6/10, when the game deserves much more.

All this to say all these scores, besides feeding fanboys Ego, and metacritics, don't help us, gamers, a lot.

Instead, they make us run and go buy that great 9/10 game, which wasn't, after finishing it, that great, and it makes us skip GREAT and HUGE games, that would give us 10 or more hours of fun, just because it only scored a 8/10, instead of a 9 or 10/10. Are we still that smart ?

[SuperStrokey1123]

Do you really think gamers will read the reviews or do you think that they will just gloss over them? I suspect that they will just move on to the next simplistic approach.

[madcow60]

No,we aren't.

[Shadonic]

I got an early copy like 3 days ago ( thankyou unknown target employee that left the game out in the showcase) and i really like it i didint really get to try multiplayer much seince i was the only one of the 20 ppl playing it early but from what i experienced with the tournaments its really really good. Even on the demo me and my friend were going at it trying to beat eachothers scores the whole day i can only imagine the different types of gameing styles innovative ppl might make up with what they have.

[cervantes99]

Man, EDGE just hates videogames don't they?

[Dazel]

Unless it's another Mario game....

[Ninjamonkey82]

Completely loved the demo throw back to what challenge was all about getting ssx soon as it releases here. Stupid review.

[SAE]

i for one didn't like the gameplay , i expected it to be more like skate because when i look at the gameplay it feels the same way so they should have made it like skate , it's perfect for it , the gameplay right now feels boring to me , it's not challening , it's like auto aim in it , it's like im not the one who's playing it , it's all about the scores not about the gameplay ...

that's what i felt from the demo , my brother felt the same too , i just hope you people enjoy it but im not gonna enjoy a game that didn't focus on the gameplay to be more challenging not score challenge ...

[Shotcalm]

This is a bad review.

[MysticStrummer]

Love this game. Just entered my first Global Event. So damn cool. Once again, Edge gets an F from me, with a U thrown in as a bonus.

[YodaCracker]

At least they don't hand out 9's like candy like a certain site I will Go without Naming.

[RockmanII7]

The game was okay, my only problem is on the point run I felt like I was doing better each time but my score was going down each time and I didn't know what I was doing wrong. Might go back to it.

[TheLastGuardian]

I never trust Edge for good reviews with fair scores.