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PS2 | Sports | SSX On Tour

Boxart for SSX On Tour
SSX On Tour 75 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.5
  • SOUND: 4.0
  • CONTROL: 4.0
  • FUN FACTOR 4.0
  • AVG USER SCORE n/a
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.3

Review: SSX On Tour

Review by JohnnyK | 10/24/2005 | 13:27:40 PM PST

SSX gets a makeover and skis in the latest installment of EA Sports BIGs wildly popular franchise.

EA Sports BIG takes their extreme sports formula in new directions with SSX On Tour, a title introduces a Career Mode and skiing to their popular franchise. But are all the changes a good thing?

Are Two Planks Better Than One?
The biggest new addition to SSX On Tour is the ability to barrel down the mountain on a pair of skis. The game is now all about creating a character and advancing through a lengthy ranked Career Mode. When you create your virtual persona you'll be given the choice of one plank (snowboard) or two (skis). The skiing plays and controls quite similarly to the boards, although there have been some minor tweaks when it comes to pulling off stringed combo runs. Essentially, however, the snowboards and the skis are nearly identical in terms of functionality and ease of use.

A Face Full Of Snow
With the new emphasis on created characters and playing though a career-spanning number of events, EA has ditched the generally laid-back "free ride" mentality that fueled SSX 3 and replaced it with what could only be described as generic filler. Instead of being able to cruise down a mountain at your leisure and pull into an event stall, you're bound to pick an event from a handful of available ones that appear on a large hub-like map. This system really starts to break down when your maps fills up with the less enjoyable events, forcing you to play through ones that you've already completed in hopes that a new one will appear alongside the bad ones.

These bad apples really sour the entire SSX On Tour experience. While the trick and race events are downright fun, others like having to grind a certain number of marked rails or even grabbing a certain number of collectible items randomly scattered around a run in a limited amount of time really kills the extreme and in your face vibe that EA is gunning for. After all, item collection is not extreme, it's just plain boring. Add to this the fact that online game-play has been completely scrapped and the cool trademark characters barely play a role in the game, you're left with a career mode that starts off with a bang and soon falls flat on its face.

From King of the Mountain to Prince of the Slopes
It's a shame that things like repetitive events and lack of online hurt SSX On Tour so much. Visually the game is top notch and incredibly unique and the new indie inspired soundtrack is a nice change of pace when stacked up against the last's installment's exclusive techno offerings. For every good aspect of the game there seems to be a bad one, and when you balance that out across the board (or ski), it just adds up to a game that tries to evolve a winning formula but falls prey to its own ambition.