SSX, formerly titled SSX: Deadly Descents, is the next big entry in the critically-acclaimed snowboarding franchise. It boasts over 70 mountains to race, trick and upgrade system updates, several game modes, and the same “over-the-top arcadey gameplay” you’d expect from an SSX title.
“Our core statement from day one has been, ‘survive it, race it, trick it,'” creative director Todd Batty told Game Informer. “And in that, we have designed three major types of gameplay.”
Those three “major types of gameplay” come in the form of game modes, each true to the game’s core statement. They are:
- Deadly Descent – a new addition to the franchise, this mode is all about survival. Obstacles like “avalanches and rockslides, and falling stalactites” will task players with making it to the bottom alive.
- Speed Descent – racing down the hill in what Batty describes as “the core of SSX“.
- Tricky Descent – the trickiest mode of them all (pun intended), players will perform tricks for the higher score.
The main menu of the boarder is a 3D model of Earth with 18 different mountain ranges highlighted across the planet. These areas include “Alaska, to Antarctica, to Sibera, The Clanaques Mountains, the Andes, The Alps, Kilimanjaro, [and] Mount Fuji.” The game has 70 mountains, whereas SSX 3 only had one. The courses players will race down are “crazy arcade courses that we’ve built on top of real-life mountains.
“You could stand on the summit of Mount Everest and look around 4,000 miles in any direction. You can see the view from the rooftop of the world.”
Rather than base its story off of a world tour, SSX‘s story focuses on the Nine Deadly Descents, or the nine most iconic mountains in the world, each with their own “environmental challenge and cultural significance”. Players will work their way up from a junior boarder to survive these descents.
SSX has an upgraded reward system, trading aesthetic gear for gear that gives players “new mechanics” on the slope. In the trailer, we saw a pickaxe; according to Batty, “ice axes are another piece of gear that let you do things like a wall vault move in Prince of Persia, or say you jump across a chasm, and you almost make it but you slide off the edge, instead of falling to your doom, you can smash those ice axes into the wall, vault yourself up, and keep going.” There are “a lot” of different gear types in the game.
Tricks will receive a huge improvement, courtesy of the Fight Night Round 4 physics system code, which Batty describes as one of the ‘most advanced systems possible’. A three-dimensional system, tricks in SSX can be performed anywhere at anytime and on any axis to create “an infinite amount of tricks”.
The character roster that shaped the heritage of SSX will return. According to Batty, “we’re bringing in a lot of returning characters, but we’ll also be introducing new characters.” The only character confirmed to return so far is Elise, the “poster child” of SSX. Each character will have their own unique set of gear.
As for multiplayer, they have “some awesome designs to share,” but are “not talking about it right now.” Batty confirms that they will have a “very strong multiplayer component,” however.
A batch of new screenshots and artwork can be seen at the gallery.
