Sports are an important part of our culture. Go to any country, and you will find that any person's favorite past time is a form of sports. Whether it be backetball, baseball, skiing, and any of a thousand different forms of sports, you yourself probably are into one. You don't even have to actually play the sport. There are thousands of sports fans out there. Need proof? Watch just about any football game and you'll see fans so devoted to their team that they will go shirtless in -40 degree weather with their team's logo painted onto their chests. Better yet, if you're smart you'll just accept it and not have to watch 50 year old men with bellies that hang out like... um... something you don't want to see.

Thankfully, not all of us are like that. Some of us are even smart enough, that we have found a way to play these fun past times without any physical effort. All we do is sit our lazy butts onto the nearest recliner, and play videogames. Personally though, I've never cared for sports simulations. Although I've come to enjoy games like Sega's 2k series, the more arcade style sports have always held a place in my heart. It all began with the classic game, NBA Jam. If you haven't ever had the oppertunity to play this game, do yourself a favor and purchase this from the bargain bin. It was the game that started the "extreme sports" genre, from which games like NFL Blitz and countless others can credit their origin. NBA Jam took the basic premise of two on two basketball, and added overly buff characters, "hip" sportcasters, wacky powerups, etc... A perfect example of this was when you got the "Dunk" upgrade, with this you could fly from one end of the court to the other, and make a stylish "dunk". At this, the crowd would light up with camera bulb flashes. Boo yea.

Recently, Electronic Arts came out with a game called SSX for the PS2. I honestly never paid attention to it, much less played it. At the time, I was still enjoying a much larger lineup for Sega's Dreamcast. But upon hearing the sequal was coming to the 'Cube, I took the dive. It's essentially a snowboarding game, taken to an extremely zany level. The game sports wacky characters that pull off rather unrealistic mid air tricks while flying down a hill on a snowboard at 60mph. Sounds interesting? Indeed, it is. For who wouldn't want to pull off tricks Tony Hawk could only dream of, from the safety of one's chair? Or couch? This game comes drenched in a style of it's own. But is this game worthy of your $50? Come on in and see...

And thus, I pressed the on button. Skipping past the memory card loading screens, I was greeted by an FMV intro. Although rather blurry and badly compressed (this can be attributed to it's PS2 origins), this movie was visually and aurally exciting enough to get me pumped. The colors!!! THE COLORS!!! The sound! IT'S TIME TO GET TRICKY!!! Oops... Excuse that outburst. Onwards I went, jumping into the first race I saw. To be honest, I did rather poorly. Had this been real life, I would have been laughed off the mountain. But it was fun. The controls were rather easy to get used too, and the race mode didn't force me to memorize trick combos off the bat. Also worth mentioning was the character I chose. Being one of the few characters that didn't have to be unlocked, Eddie was an obvious choice. I just had to see how that fro would stand up after I "staged" several face plants. But in the end, I was too busy taking in the "style" of the game to bother. As I said before, this game is drenched in style. Everything from the colors to the music screamed... um... something. Hmmmm... ONTO THE REVIEW!!!

Well, there are good points and bad points. Hoping to prolong my life from the merciless hands of SSX's fans everywhere, I'll begin with the good. The first graphical piece that struck me was the menu layout. When you are selecting a character and course, this game takes the rather unusual route of 3D menus. The camera zooms onto certain areas of this rather large staging area while you are selecting modes, characters, etc... It actually looked rather cool. Also of interest is the characters themselves. Each character has a completely unique and zany design going on for them. Not mention the actual in game animations! Each character has their own special Uber-tricks, each one completely different and unique. Seeing the boarders flipping around their boards, in mid air, was an eye-popper to say the least. Wait, what about the bad parts? First, the framerate can be a nightmare at times. You'd think that while converting this game to run on Gamecube, a system that's more powerful and easier to program for, they could have done something about it. But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The accursed thing jumps around from 30fps to 60fps consistantly. I found this to be pretty distracting, although you do get used to it after some time. Then there's the issue of the two player mode. I have come to expect that two player game graphics are worse than their one player counterpart. Although, recently I have been proved wrong through games like WaveRace that hold up their framerate and detail levels. In SSX Tricky, the detail level doesn't appear to go down at all. And the framerate? Instead of a jumpy 30fps to 60fps, the game stays at a solid 30fps. I'd prefer a consitant 30fps to a jumpy one anyday. BUT! The camera retains the same character/landscape to overall screen size ratio. What does this mean? Imagine you're playing one player mode, then you cover up the left half of the screen with paper. That's what each player's screen looks like, albeit with the character re-centered. Due to this, you can see very little of what's surrounding your character, leading to many object collisions, crashes, and an overall increase of irritation. Overall, the graphics are not bad. It's just... Well... I like the graphics, but the flaws can really take away from their respective modes.

Ok.... How do I start off this section? Have you ever eaten Spam? It's an excellent meat, although not that healthy for you. Kinda like uninspired in-game music and sound clips. Thankfully, that isn't too much of a concern in this case. This isn't some Final Fantasy mega blockbuster RPG we're talking about here. All the music really needs to do is keep your mind out of the real world, and inside of the videogame. All the sound really needs to do is make you think you are inside wherever the game is taking place, and maybe make you laugh with a voice clip or two. The music in this game is all liscened from real bands. But I'm not a big fan of pop-music (Hoo boy, just wait until I review Tony Hawk 3 ;). To me, it's all engineered by and for marketing, rather than being made by those who truely love music as an art. But I'm not too ashamed to admit that the music does add some nice atmosphere. The opening song, although quite cheesy (The singer doesn't sing, so much as he keeps rapping out "ITS TRICKY!!!!!!!!"), adds to the identity of this game. The music, overall, is all about he identity of this game. In this respect, it works quite well. Then there's the sound clips. The characters are voiced by real actors, not by some broom closet group. That's good, I really hate bad voice acting, even when it's for something as simple as a voice quip. These voices are great, the quips are actually funny! Ex. "JUST LIKE I PLANNED IT!!! Only bad..." Again, the keyword is "identity". The sound and the music help give this game personality. Problem is, it just doesn't anywhere beyond that.

That's right. This is the stuff that really matters. In the end, a game is made or broken by gameplay. Unless you buy games for their graphics, then you're just plain stupid. So, what's SSX Tricky all about? It's about snowboarders. In this game, you are given the oppurtunity to fly down a mountain and 30mph on... a piece of fiberglass. In the meantime, you can pull off crazy stunts and stuff while you go down. You see, that's the problem right there. It's all about doing stunts while you're waiting to get to the bottom of the hill. The whole hybrid things just doesn't work because, to be blunt, the racing sucks. Take away the tricks, and it's boring. It's "I can't wait to get to the bottom of the hill so I can be done" type boring. Ok, so we have the pure trick mode. Do tricks while you're going down the hill. Cool. Wait. Not cool. Is it just me, or does it almost feel like you're still racing down the hill? I mean, not competing, but rushing past a bunch of trick oppurtunities that you will never have the chance to do because YOU JUST PASSED THEM UP!!! It's more of a flaw in the basic design than the actual execution. I call it "On Rails Action". In Tony Hawk, you were in a stationary enviorment in which you could zoom around, but you could always come back to some sweet jump. It didn't matter if you passed it up the first time. There are tracks in SSX, in which they take a circut approach, where you do laps. But in general, if you miss a jump, there's no second chance for you until next round. Ok, but a pathetic design flaw like this could be fixed with some awesome tournament mode, right? Well, onto the circut mode. Where... You do more race and trick modes. It's all the same, except you unlock stuff.... MORE RACE AND TRICK TRACKS!!!! yea... Great... There's just nothing special about it. Granted, overall it's still fun. Once you forgive it's flaws and perfect your skills, you can really get into it. But it just doesn't have much pull to it. Most of the time, I'd probably rather play something... Rating: 6/10

The Gamecube controller... An object of much love and scorn. Overtime, I've come to enjoy this little beast more and more. Although I'd prefer if it was slightly bigger to fit my hands, it more than makes up for it with it's innovative design. With such un-earthly perfection, game controls should be all be perfect. HA! If only I lived in such a world. The actual physical setup is quite nice, and easy to get into. The controls for this game are quite simple. The two triggers are the essential trick buttons, followed by the X,B and Z trigger. BUT FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR OWN SANITY DON'T EVER PRESS THAT Y BUTTON! Assuming it was yet another trick button, I pressed it in the middle of my first real big combo. It's a reset button that sets you back on the track. I lost all 6 digits worth of points I had in that freaking combo. But other than this little mishap, the physical controls work like a charm, with their simple yet innovative. Wondering why I keep saying physical? The in-game control response is somewhat of a different matter. Most of the time, it works just like it should. BUT, occasionally you'll run into situations where you are trying to start a grind. In this game, the grind action comes automatically when you land on a rail. In some situations, you can don't even have to jump onto the rail, as it ramps up from the ground. But come in from the wrong angle, and the game acts as if you just ran into a wall, forcing you to give up a possibly crucial grind. But that's it; the only real flaw in the control scheme. Not perfect, but wonderfully simple to use, and fun to master.

Somewhat of a dissapointment to me, this game was. Like Yoda, I speak? Easy to learn, the control was. Enjoyable the game was, but flawed. Jumpy framerates please me not. Neither does this "on rails action" thing. It's really hard to rate this sort of game. On one hand, its got character and style going for it. On the other, the game has irritating points that can stick out like a sore. But please understand, by no means am I saying this game bluntly sucks. This game is worth a purchase, or a rent at the very least. REALLY!!! It's a fun game to spend some time with. It just doesn't measure up as the super epic revolutionary system seller that Nintendo's fans are desperately waiting for.

+ Sound and Music creates a wonderful atmosphere

+ Pick up and play control

- Race mode sucks

- GAH!!! ACTION ON RAILS!!! HEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLPPP!!!!!!

? Hey, Eddie! What kinda hair gel are ya using on that fro?!

Overall (not an average): 7/10
Not the blockbuster we're all waiting for, but don't write it off. Spend some time with this game, you'll enjoy it.