The extreme sports genre was one that was flirting with the mainstream ever since the release of the PS1, but it took a few years for it to gain traction in the market. But after 1080 Snowboarding (on the N64) burst onto the scene in 1998, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater came out the next year, it seemed like everyone wanted to get in on the extreme sports trend. In a few short years, the genre went from underrepresented to overrepresented, and individual titles struggled to distinguish themselves. One title that did distinguish itself was the original SSX.
Critically acclaimed at its time, playing through SSX now can feel a lot more like an exercise in futility. The mechanics are tight, and races are interesting, and the arcade style of racing is a lot more refined than other snowboarding games at the time. In isolation, playing this game feels mostly fine, and it's an enjoyable multiplayer experience. It's the difficulty and ruthlessness of the single-player mode that makes this game feel unrewarding. To get gold medals and advance in the game, it required finishing in the top 3 two races in a row, and then in 1st place in the third race. What's frustrating is that the AI doesn't make mistakes, so if you don't know the time-saving shortcuts, or you mess up a trick, you'll likely not be finishing in 1st. Since restarting a race puts you at the beginning of the 3 races, the game gets tedious and uninteresting very quickly.
On its surface, SSX is a fun game, especially to play with others, and it started a series that would go on to achieve much higher highs than this game did. Most of what made SSX enjoyable has been refined and perfected in its sequel, so there's little reason to play this game these days. SSX may be an obsolete game in the present, but at its time, it laid the groundwork for a successful arcade-style snowboarding game, and produced two sequels of outstanding quality.
Critically acclaimed at its time, playing through SSX now can feel a lot more like an exercise in futility. The mechanics are tight, and races are interesting, and the arcade style of racing is a lot more refined than other snowboarding games at the time. In isolation, playing this game feels mostly fine, and it's an enjoyable multiplayer experience. It's the difficulty and ruthlessness of the single-player mode that makes this game feel unrewarding. To get gold medals and advance in the game, it required finishing in the top 3 two races in a row, and then in 1st place in the third race. What's frustrating is that the AI doesn't make mistakes, so if you don't know the time-saving shortcuts, or you mess up a trick, you'll likely not be finishing in 1st. Since restarting a race puts you at the beginning of the 3 races, the game gets tedious and uninteresting very quickly.
On its surface, SSX is a fun game, especially to play with others, and it started a series that would go on to achieve much higher highs than this game did. Most of what made SSX enjoyable has been refined and perfected in its sequel, so there's little reason to play this game these days. SSX may be an obsolete game in the present, but at its time, it laid the groundwork for a successful arcade-style snowboarding game, and produced two sequels of outstanding quality.