Game Review: SSX

If you've ever plunged down a slope of death-defying proportions, listening to a certain Run DMC song, playing as a male individual with a giant afro, you probably have been watching this game very closely to see whether it is the renaissance of a genre that's been dead for too long, or a metaphorical final nail in the coffin of video-game brand rebirths.

We can fortunately say it's the former, and in a rather dramatic fashion.

You see, dear reader, in an unforgivable sea of the perpetual nonsense that's been series reboots, SSX is probably the first to actually stick to its roots, without conviction of what it means to play a game of it's own brand.  Insane tricks, genre defining gameplay, hyper-real scenarios, a pitch-perfect soundtrack, and an eccentric visual style, all adding up to an atmosphere that provokes an emotion that we haven't really experienced since Tricky: a feeling of 'coming home.'

It's difficult to explain; but for all the extra additions of content the EA Canada has made (making for a sizeably hefty game for your money's worth): the multiplayer design (with the seamless integration into your experience, it's probably the most innovative in an extreme sports game this generation has ever seen), the entirety of 153 diverse courses to explore, the blasè narrative that becomes wholly irrelevant in the face of the action, the return to a near-60 fps framerate, the recreation of alps from impeccably detailed NASA imagery, and the cavalcade of additions that add to a quantitative success, turns out it's not these added features that we loved especially.

It's the remeniscence taken away from every single sitting you have with this game.  The pure unadulterated feeling of returning to something we thought was dead and gone.  The act of bringing what consumed hours of my adolescent life back from the grave.  The act of 'coming home.'  8/10