I have a dark secret to admit when it comes to this game, something that fans of SSX might not forgive me for.........SSX3 is a better game than SSX Tricky.

This game is a great example of how open-world gameplay can enhance a game. Unlike most open-world games where it's just a bunch of stuff around, SSX3's tracks are designed in a way in which the extra stuff is addition, as opposed to the main course.

Another good thing about SSX3 is that it retains the feel of the SSX series. Tricky is known for being a light-hearted affair. While this game is a little more serious, the spirit of competition definitely lives on.

The only downgrade when compared to Tricky is the removal of unique stats and only 1 type of board. It makes characters lose their identity as unique characters. This isn't the worst idea since stats are most customable than in Tricky, but it does degrade the character's uniqueness.

In short, SSX3 is one of the best games of the sixth-generation of consoles and is a must play for both sports fans and general audiences.

text by Thomas Callahan

★★★☆

“NEAT AND TIDY.”

Racecourses are lumped together into “peaks”, then stitched between dead-end “slopestyle” and “superpipe” runs. Win exactly three races, one slopestyle competition and one superpipe event to achieve Peak Completion, and Unlock the next peak.



The upshot is that these courses are interconnected, albeit pretty artificially. It’s very important that you can finish barreling down a racecourse (participation is entirely optional) and carve directly into the next one without a loading screen, a signpost, or any sort of hiccup. When you Unlock Final Peak Three, you can drop in directly onto the precarious, finely pointed tip of Big Mountain and tumble downhill for 30 minutes without interruption. This shouldn’t be absolutely exceptional, but it is. Anyone who has pedantically compared Half-Life’s insistence on seamless videogaming and removal of uninteractive cutscenes to cinéma verité will surely scrounge up something of interest here.

Perhaps that came off as a bit harsh. SSX 3’s breathless, mountain-encompassing half-hour of continuous play really does feel as bold and absorbing an endeavor as any meticulously composed extended take. The game boots up with a lengthy series of logos (as per the norm with EA), has you wait around a moment before skipping the intro, and puts you through a sizable loading sequence before granting access to Big Mountain — the tradeoff being that it will never stop you pushing buttons again. Judging by the sporadic clicking of machinery in my GameCube, memory/RAM is hauled up during the occasional “base runs”, which serve as gateways to different Events. That these runs are fairly barren has something to do with disc-reading, I suppose. All the same, they keep up illusions far better than menus, meters or videoclips; though they are visibly contrived, at the very least they continue the constant engagement of my thumbs and reflexes.

On that note: SSX 3 is wonderfully satisfying in terms of tactile feedback. To pull off tricks, you must reach your hand over to your controller’s four-way “directional pad” (speaking in generalities here because this is a multi-console affair), tapping it in one of eight directions while, simultaneously, jamming down one, two or three of your controller’s “shoulder buttons”, midair. This kind of bracing, effortful clunkiness makes onscreen response all the more compelling — it’s the same principle that makes Nintendo 64 first-person shooters, with their stilted combination of genuine analog movement with purely digital C-Button “strafe” and “look up/down”, eminently enjoyable in a way weightless modern-day “dual-stick” setups are not.

Also contributing here is a kind of odd application of RPG mechanics. While you compete in events, or even while you pull off jumps and grabs in your spare time, you accumulate cash, and the money can be put towards Acceleration, or Edging, or Stability, or Toughness. Character attributes are rated on a scale of 11; you’ll pay through the nose. Odd because leveling-up is usually implemented as a substitute for actual, trial-and-error bred improvement in videogames: pattern recognition, pattern memorization, grasp of in-game physics . . . all the little factors which fall into place, ideally, as a game’s difficulty level ramps up. (Few recent games manage to coordinate this learning curve/tension ratio elegantly. Super Monkey Ball does, brilliantly, and I suppose Metroid Prime does too.) Such is not the case here: your numbers go up and your “real” skill level increases at the same time. The two are indistinguishable. You merely notice, faintly, that while you continue exploring the mountain, stumbling upon shortcuts and little rail-to-rail sequences, your snowboarder’s response to your button-pushing feels increasingly fluid, increasingly smooth. It happens gradually, under your nose. Jump from an 11/11 stats-maxed-out character to a new one, though, and you’ll feel it, you’ll feel sort of vaguely stuffty, that’s it.

(A quibble: the 2-player splitscreen mode forces you to use the same character profiles you use in the main mode, which means that — unless you have two people actively playing through the main, peak-unlocking Quest at the same time on the same disc, leveling up two characters at an equal rate — one player will control a responsive, graceful character, and the other will be stuck with some loose and dinky counterpart. This little oversight renders the multiplayer quite irrelevant.)


I’ve owned this game for about two years. Every month or so I put it on and attempt to make it down from the summit to the village without falling or slipping up. It’s amazing how much can go wrong in 30 minutes of unbroken concentration, and with enough repetition, it’s amazing how mindless the half-hour marathon becomes. Pure autopilot — yet it remains gripping simply for the kind of flow state it puts you in. Videogames are generally stressful experiences; this alone separates SSX 3, with its serene all-mountain glide, from most of my (unenviable) games collection. Add onto this a completely inoffensive, banal aesthetic: generic arcadey clutter is coupled with Big Mountain’s increasingly fractured courses, a soft-spoken DJ mutters about trail conditions. Hell, even if you do find this stuff aesthetically offensive, you can turn off the HUD and the arcade SFX and the DJ and his pop-punk, streamlining the interface to something as lonesome as you like.



There’s something to be said for convenient videogames, games you can glean a pleasant response out of without significant time input or emotional investment. A swift double-punch — economic inflation, coupled with mainstream reviews solemnly emphasizing, above all things, “replay value” — has lent sheer game length a new importance. Developers hasten to pad their games out, advertising raw hours on the back of their “box-art”. It’s, yeah, infantile and powerful as hell: filler is bang for your buck, because digestibility, before you know it, is digested. Still, you know. A certain degree of detachment here is worthwhile. Yes, industry-wide nostalgia-riding is relentless; yes, the medium’s narrative potential looks to remain unfulfilled for obvious logistic reasons; yes, videogames are, on average, deeply mediocre. But I don’t have the energy nor the idealism to get truly angry over this carnivalesque little market. Lucky exceptions, coincidences and successes pop up with enough frequency to make the console-owning experience worthwhile. SSX 3's 30-minute full-mountain run is exceptionally good instant gratification. A neat, self-contained burst of escapism. I can casually speed down SSX 3‘s Big Mountain — or through chunks of Mega Man 2 or Super Mario Bros. 3 or Goldeneye 007 or other such rhythmically entrancing, expertly paced entertainment — when I want to punctuate my schedule with this specific, delightful sensation.

much more ambitious than any of its predecessors courtesy of the open world setup, which works sublimely. brilliant fun, so satisfying to pull off uber tricks and nail tricky corners with some of the tightest controls and course designs in any game ive ever played. the other freeride modes are also just as fun and satisfying. graphically it looks fantastic with a pretty good licensed soundtrack (although not my personal favourite EA gen 6 ost). man this game is just so awesome and reeks of the early 2000s in a very charming way. again, wtf happened to this EA man

SSX 3 is an adrenaline-fueled snowboarding extravaganza that sends you soaring down a massive, interconnected mountain. With fluid controls, over-the-top tricks, and a pumping soundtrack, it delivers a pure arcade-style rush. Customize your rider, conquer varied challenges, and unleash insane "Uber Tricks" to dominate the slopes. While the single-player experience might feel short for some, SSX 3 excels in its replayability, inviting you to perfect your runs and chase high scores with stylish abandon.

I have a really hard time comparing this entry to Tricky, but after trying every mountain event at least once, I have a better idea. Progression, customization, trick mechanics, and a sense of speed are all incredible. SSX 3 unfortunately falls short when it comes to tracks. They're all mechanically sound, but all blur together and don't have any standout or memorable entries like Garibaldi, Tokyo Megaplex, or Aloha Ice Jam from the previous games. Still, aside from that and some control weirdness, the game absolutely holds up and I wish they still made games like this.

Unbeatable and unrepeatable. SSX 3 is an absolute icon of the extreme sports genre at it's finest, and it proves that through gameplay that's snappy, smooth, and satisfying. Any issues from previous titles have been ironed out, and what's left is a nearly flawless experience. All 3 peaks take you down the slopes with perfectly tuned racing and a trick system that's endlessly addictive, all accompanied by a soundtrack that fits like a glove. It's pure early '00s bliss, and a title that should be a staple of anyone's gen 6 console library.

you know, i get it. for most of my adult life, i've mourned the SSX series and waited like a coiled spring for a new game. granted, i never played any of the entries after this one, but, to be fair, they all looked like microwaved dogshit. still, i've waited for a true sequel to this game for so long. and i do finally understand why we haven't gotten it and never will. it is frankly just too fucking difficult to iterate on this game. from top to bottom, this game is mechanically dense and full of little refinements and tweaks to the SSX formula that i can't see being improved upon. you could try, sure, but it'd be a fool's errand. this was the peak of SSX. this was the furthest the series could go. it was a funeral for the series. but it was also a celebration for the series.

i used to be someone who thought SSX Tricky was the ever-so-slightly better entry, but now that feels like a borderline offensive opinion to throw out. SSX Tricky is a fantastic, outstanding game. but does it push as many boundaries of game design like 3? does it manage to add a superior level of complexity to preexisting mechanics in a way that feels like a natural evolution like 3? hell, does it even have the better OST? all these years, I used to think these questions weighed in Tricky's favor. i just can't see it now. (that said, i still absolutely crave the remix of "Smartbomb" on Tricky's OST on spotify. i need it badly.)

SSX 3 is a landmark game in what it achieves as early as 2003, but it remains a landmark game in how well it's aged and managed to still be fresh to play. i know everyone gushes about it, but it truly is impressive as all fuck to be able to start at the top of peak 3 and go through six different and varied courses and end all the way at the bottom of peak 1 without a single load screen from the word go.

the loss in vibrancy, cartoonishness, and informed personality does hurt, and it's always been my biggest sticking point with the game. yeah, all of Tricky's cast fucking annihilates the newcomers here and all the returnees feel like they've been sand-papered down to a less distinct and memorable edge. i can completely concede that. but, the game puts emphasis on characterizing the different tracks of the game. there's nothing quite as outlandish as aloha ice jam or outright impossible as tokyo megaplex, but we trade that for grounded fantasies. look at something like ruthless. ruthless is absolute eye-candy for anyone who has an appreciation for nature, but it also has this horrific realism to it in that you could easily imagine it claiming the lives of reckless newcomers every year. sure, you're still hitting rails at lightning speed and regularly doing jumps that should shatter femurs, but the style shift to realism makes it feel more memorable and weighty.

all this is to say that i can't necessarily begrudge anyone who prefers Tricky. at this point, i've seen approximately 0 people ever argue either of these games are bad, so it feels as though it's a continuous argument between which of these two games is the more definitive entry. forgive me, but i'm going to use a fairly nebbish final argument for my position. we've had sequel after sequel for SSX 3 try to take the series in a new direction and each has ultimately failed. most tellingly, none of these games have tried to claim the mantle of SSX 4. and how could you? how could you ever claim to iterate on SSX 3 when it captured the formula, the gameplay, the design, everything so well? there has never been anything like this game since its release, and, at this point, it's starting to look more and more certain that there never will be.

personally, i would love to play SSX 4. i just expect that if i ever do, it won't be called that. the series is dead, and i say that with reverence.

I finished pretty much everything with one Character but couldn't bring myself to do it with everyone, it's just too much of a grind. However, the experience i had with just the one character was amazing. I played this back in the 2000's when it first came out and have gone back to it here and there to try and get everything. It's a great example of how controls and an open world should be (within a sports game, anyhow). The environments are perfect and i believe are the peak in the SSX series here, along with the controls. The music is on par with the Tony Hawk's series and i wouldn't be surprised to hear it shaped many people's taste in music growing up. Overall, a fantastic game with maybe just a little too much to do?