S S X Deadly Descents: Jan 2012!

[mobias]

What a game.

Indeed and remember you've only got two tracks. There's 58 more individual tracks in the finished game. The best thing about SSX 2012 that perhaps you haven't seen yet are the avalanche sections where the camera flips round in front of your character and you have to control everything in reverse. If you go to the 44min mark in this demo video you can get to see a night time avalanche run in Alaska, it just looks amazing fun http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0ah72D2--E

[Neil]

Oh my. I've got to have this game. Definitely getting it next week, can't wait!

[falafel]

This is big. It can't possibly disappoint. Payday next week!

[Big Jack McBastard]

What's that? Oh nothing just getting 14.6 million and schooling you pretenders on the trick slope, come at me bro for realsies.

[Neil]

Never liked you.

[BeardFaceMan]

Me either.

Also I've just found out you can skip the skyboarding part by pressing start and then selecting quit. That takes you straight to the explore menu.

[Neil]

Nice one. Looks like either Game or Gamestation for preorders, then, as you get Mt Fuji and Eddie.

[BeardFaceMan]

Bugger. I oredered mine from amazon a few weeks ago and it's saying you only get the Kaori Elite Gear DLC which by the looks of it is just a snowboard  Hehe if only I'd waited but I saw a gameplay vid on youtube and couldn't help myself, ordered it straight away, I didn't realise there was other pre-order freebies out there. Also, is anyone noticing a difference between the 2 characters available at the mo? Is one better for racing and one better for tricks?

[Neil]

You could always cancel, you also run the risk of not getting it till the Monday, although I was ok with UFC Undisputed 3.

[Penfold]

I've preordered from GAME after playing the demo.

Although like Hank Venture, I have stuff to play.

UFC, Mass Effect 2 (2nd playthrough), and Rayman Origins turned up today.

with this and Mass Effect 3 the week after it means I have actual reasons to not go out.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Never liked you.

Me either.

Mwahahaha! I'm off to kick my own ass (and thus everyone else's again) shortly.

Is the pre-order stuff any cop or does that gear get unlocked in-game/released as DLC eventually anyway? I've got a couple of titles I'm thinking of trading in so I get it for 'free' so I'll probably miss out on any extras.

[buntyman]

£40 seems so much to pay for a game these days given how quickly the price tends to halve. Saying that, I did buy Zelda on the Wii on release day and haven't really played it much but at least that still seems to have remained at a high price.

[mobias]

Is the pre-order stuff any cop or does that gear get unlocked in-game/released as DLC eventually anyway? I've got a couple of titles I'm thinking of trading in so I get it for 'free' so I'll probably miss out on any extras.

You get Mt Fuji as a pre-order bonus. It does look pretty cool from the images I've seen of it. You can be 100% guaranteed it'll appear as DLC in a month or so though.

[Neil]

Yeah that seems to be the way it goes.

One thing that's uncommon, though, is their attitude to multiplayer. Most games now will come with one-time use codes, so people who buy the game used have to buy a license. Battlefield Bad Company 2 severly restricted the available maps but gave you a few as a taster.

SSX is doing "Freemium" where I think you can play the whole online stuff, but no records will be stored.

[Neil]

Dicking around on it again - it really has some of the coolest game experiences I've ever encountered. And they're spontaneous and skill-based, rather than, y'know, bullet-time sequences and stuff. It's exhilarating and truly awesome to fly through the air, spinning like a top... then you realise you're way off the track/lines, and wonder if you can manage to land safely on a rocky outcrop. It's dodgy, and you almost crash and burn, but, YES! You make it! 

Beautiful.

[BeardFaceMan]

and now back to ufc.

until that time is beaten.

*ahem*

Now to go to the trick run and take care of Jack. Oh I'm a comin' at you all right.

[Neil]

Hah, I saw the scoreboard 20 minutes or so, and you were 0.02 of a second behind him, or thereabouts.

[Big Jack McBastard]

In what must have been almost the exact same instant I jumped to the top of the board on the speed run had half a second to go 'Yay' and then Beardy knocked me off it, by half a second

Bastardo.

Up to 17.something million on the trick slope though, you can suck on that for a bit.

I've not played a demo this much in years, fantastic stuff, you go creating marvels of inner ear/gravity defying acrobatics, guiding your bod like a bullet that's pelting like fuck down a mountain to music that warps to your actions, what's not to like?

I think I'll leave it be for now so as not to wear it out and ruin my hands any further, but I'm coming for all you bitches once the real game is out!

[mobias]

I've heard in the gaming grape vine that that demo is based on the game as it was 2 months ago. Expect the finished game to be technically noticeably better in various areas.

To get you all salivating a bit more here's some newly released footage of the Patagonia level which, long with the Alps, is one of the two most extreme areas in the game. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7LuSosZOdY&feature=youtu.be  I've seen footage of the Alps and it looks insane. You'll be really fighting just to stay on the tracks, lots of really narrow ridges with huge drops either side.

edit. Also great new footage of Alaska. Check out the avalanche  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYHoHXWKMAk&feature=player_embedded#!

[BeardFaceMan]

Fuck, I need to stop watching those vids. Still a week to go and I'll have died from dehydration cos of all the drooling I'm doing.

[mobias]

This is how you score 26 million on Bulldog. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DH1TdqF6FU4

[Neil]

That looks boring, all that constant jumping. What is this, Quake?

[HappyTree]

I suppose there's no way around this. For points you need combos and more combos mean more points. Amped tried to make things more stylish with style points, but it was a bit distracting to have to think about trying to hold the thumbstick halfway. Nice try but didn't work for me.

But I agree, it's way more fun just to have a fluid experience and feel the air than racking up mega-points. One cool über trick is better than 15 little jumps to keep the multiplier alive.

[Big Jack McBastard]

#Try-in' to find the in-between.#

There's many a time where I've hit medals in exactly the same places as in that vid and had a very similar base score of about 11 million at the gate (before the multiplier got stuck on).

#Eeh yeah, eeh yeah, eeh yeah, eeh yeah!#

I reckon that's probably the result of two or three crashes, it's all about making a continuum of movement and doing the longest chain you can, ditto goes for every skateboarding game but this makes it more fun and less of a chore than every skateboarding game,.. and every other snowboarding game I've played actually.

#Focus on your ability, focus on your abilitee!#

When I saw one of the ghosts of the other players launch into a trick right at the start it clicked straight away, you can get in about 7 tricks before getting off the first rial and onto the big jump on the right and if you time it right land on another rail below and on and on it goes,

#Gamma gamma with the Wampa stew, gamma gamma with the Wampa Stew![nb]Or whatever the fuck it is that's being sung there I dunno.[/nb]#

There's probably a more elegant way of getting through the level though, he stalls and bounces off things here and there and whoring out the half-pipe for a few more tricks wouldn't be out of the question.

I'm sure new gear and characters will render that score laughable.

[mobias]

I didn't realise the key to getting better scores is unlocking Mac. He's got significantly higher stats. Edit. Only for Trick it though.   

Verifiable world records on both runs currently stands at Race it - 1.42 and Trick it - 47,170,024

I can't really get my head round either of those scores. Someone is claiming to have broken the 50 million barrier on trick it but it hasn't been confirmed.

A 1.46 race it run http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmVQ-ek6jJs&feature=player_embedded#!

[BeardFaceMan]

Yeah doing all those jumps and flips all the time is a little boring, I tend just just hold x or b and do ground tricks inbetween the big jumps to keep my combo going. That's probably why I can't get a great score. I far prefer the race run to the trick run at the moment, it's far more fun. That's my excuse for not beating Jack's score anyway. Bastard.

[mobias]

Yeah doing all those jumps and flips all the time is a little boring, I tend just just hold x or b and do ground tricks inbetween the big jumps to keep my combo going. That's probably why I can't get a great score. I far prefer the race run to the trick run at the moment, it's far more fun. That's my excuse for not beating Jack's score anyway. Bastard.

With the old SSX's I much preferred racing. I used to dread the freestyle events. I will admit though they've made freestyle much more fun with SSX2012. It's quite satisfying getting a good run on Bulldog. I agree that they've made superuber mode just a little too fast and crazy, you're nothing more that a ball of spinning neon lights. With SSX3 and and On Tour the ubers were a lot slower and more graceful. You could see what was going on.

There's a few of the hard core fans out there who have early copies of the full game. The final individual track count including the 9 deadly decents is 77 which is a huge number of courses to play on. 

This is how you score over 50 million on bulldog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZ7rCy4trvU

[mobias]

New IGN review. 9/10  http://uk.ign.com/videos/2012/02/24/ssx-video-review

[buntyman]

Played the demo, recorded a pathetic score and decided this isn't for me. I can't quite understand the enthusiasm for this, it just seems very dated in the dull character designs/awesome personalities and the same jump, grind, combo system that I got bored of on the ps2. There also seemed too many routes down the slopes for my liking making it harder to keep track or where everyone is in a straight race mode (assuming such a mode exists and it isn't all points scoring battles).

[mobias]

Played the demo, recorded a pathetic score and decided this isn't for me. I can't quite understand the enthusiasm for this, it just seems very dated in the dull character designs/awesome personalities and the same jump, grind, combo system that I got bored of on the ps2. There also seemed too many routes down the slopes for my liking making it harder to keep track or where everyone is in a straight race mode (assuming such a mode exists and it isn't all points scoring battles).

The awesome personalities bit I agree with (incidentally you can turn them off or down) I never quite understood the obsession some people have with the SSX characters but the rest of the game looks amazing. The combo system is much improved from past SSX's where by if you crashed or didn't do enough tricks in a certain time frame then you lost your combo. In SSX2012 its based on a timed system whereby your combo just slowly decreases if you don't keep it topped up with tricks. There's a straight race mode in the demo in the Rockies region. The tracks are wider with fewer racers so there isn't quite the frenetic race feel of past SSX's. Its much more about putting down a good time rather than simply becoming first in any given race. I guess its quite geared to big online challenges.

Other than that I love it. Arcade racers in any genre have died a death this generation and its great to see the most loved of them all make a come back. For me SSX is a much purer game experience than the high concept, head up the arse of the movie industry games like Uncharted which have taken over this gen.