| Introduction
Electronic Arts hardly churns out GBA titles at the
moment, and if you actually see their logo on some games,
it's because they've been franchised to third party
developers. EA appears to release fewer titles every
year, seemingly opting for the "quality over quantity"
approach to GBA development and publishing. One of those
few titles, SSX Tricky, has been acclaimed as one of
the best-selling Snowboarding/Freestyle titles on home
consoles, and the initial screen shots of the GBA version
previewed earlier this year were greeted with considerable
excitement. A lot can go wrong though in those final
months of development, and visuals say little about
gameplay.
GamePlay
SSX Tricky is a snowboarding game that challenges
you to master eight different international courses,
controlling up to 12 different characters. Success is
achieved by winning medals in the World Circuit, where
you must not only win the racing section but also perform
a variety of tricks in the Showoff mode.
There's also a Time Challenge, where you must beat
the current track record and better it at a later date.
Two characters are available to start off with, but
you'll quickly realize how limited these are as the
game progresses. The remaining characters, who all have
very different strengths and weaknesses, become available
as you win medals in the Race and Showoff modes.
The first thing most players should head for is the
standard Race option, as this gives you a feel for the
course layout and the basic controls. You'll have four
other snowboarders with you in this race, but if you
don't gain a little distance initially, you'll find
you'll collide with them on a regular basis.
The Showoff section takes place on exactly the same
course, but you're the only competitor, and the area
will be littered with bonus items and various sections
of rail that pop up in the center of the track. This
is a lot more difficult, so although many players may
win a Bronze Medal on their first go, further prizes
are very difficult to earn.
There are also Time Gates dotted around both courses,
so too many falls or too much time spent perfecting
tricks will see your timer ticking away until it's Game
Over. Everything is saved to a battery back up, but
there's only a single save slot, so be careful lending
your copy out.
Controls
The control system is flawed to say the least; the
main reason for this being that it goes against what
you've been instinctively doing in games for years now.
Take a simple race for example, where you must press
up on the D-Pad in order to gain speed. This is fine
until you hit one of the many ramps; as soon as you're
in mid-air, it changes its function and instead forces
you into a trick, which of course results in a wipeout.
There's absolutely no way to change this, and if a game
ever needed a 'change control settings' option, this
is it. The huge tutorial section helps to a certain
extent, but since it only really deals with the various
tricks you can perform, it's not much good when you're
just simply trying to win a race.
Graphics
Obviously most of us were first drawn to the GBA
version by the incredible screen shots that appeared
on the Net some months ago, and although most of these
visual features have remained intact, they are simply
not as impressive when they're on the move.
This is due to the restrictive nature of the engine,
so while the developers may have tried their best, the
GBA conversion is plagued with graphical dropout and
an incredibly short draw distance. This really compromises
the excitement and the feelings of impending doom when
faced with huge drops or hazards that made the console
versions such a hit.
There are also considerable problems with the collision
detection, both with other snowboarders and with some
of the scenery, so you might find that if you're not
performing tricks on one of the rails you can simply
ride through it. On the plus side, gamers are treated
to wonderful FMV scenes--if only this level of quality
had been reflected in the main game, SSX Tricky would
have been a lot more fun.
Sound & Music
The soundtrack is actually quite pleasing as far
as extreme sports themes go, although the audio that
accompanies the menus is noticeably more sophisticated
than the in-game audio. This changes from track to track,
and does actually help to build the heart-pumping atmosphere
of an Extreme Sports arena. Everything else is given
over to a general Snowboarding sound, but to be honest,
driving through snow has never really sounded that interesting
and SSX Tricky is no exception.
Final Comments
This is not the first home console title we've seen
that's tried to do the seemingly impossible: producing
a handheld conversion while dealing with the obvious
constraints of the platform. The eventual outcome is
a real hit and miss affair, so while some aspects of
the game's visual presentation are incredible, the actual
snowboarding sections suffer from bland course design
and limitations of the GBA's engine. Some aspects of
the control system are a little unforgiving, so it may
take you some time to discover what you're actually
doing wrong. The game's developers, Visual Impact, took
on an ambitious conversion with SSX Tricky, and while
some portions of the game demonstrate the incredible
power of the GBA, the resulting gameplay is flawed at
best.
|
Hardware
Reviews 
Game
Title
