I figured I'd wait until I finished the game and got all the Uber Tricks before I passed final judgement on SSX Blur. Post your final reviews here as well. I'm going to use the format I did for SSX On Tour:

• What you liked about the game, and what features they should bring to the next version
  
• What you didn't like about the game - be frank, but don't rant. If you didn't like something, state why and move on.
  
• What you missed from this version - tell EA what you sorely missed from this version of SSX.
  
• What suggestions you would like to see in the next game apart from what was featured in this game or any of the previous.

What you liked about the game, and what features they should bring to the next version
- I liked the control scheme. I wouldn't say I loved the control scheme, because at times it was extremely unresponsive and that can be frustrating, but it's nowhere near as tough as the reviews made it out to be. You can easily pull off multiple ubers per jump as long as you have the airtime. It really does make the game feel refreshing.
- I loved the atmosphere of SSX Blur. It's about time we got back to the slick, brightly colored environments and fun characters. The tracks are bright again, and have personality, something that was sorely lacking in SSX On Tour.
-I loved that DJ Atomika is back. He's so beneficial to a cool mountain experience in my opinion.
- I loved the tournament idea, and especially the last tournament for elites. It's about time someone does that for the players that really master the game.
- I LOVED the music - no more EA TRAX please. Keep it freshly created electronica, that's the soul of SSX. Not whiny emo-rock like Avenged Sevenfold.
- I like the combo between the stats system and the board system. The boards should be for small bonuses, like you had. That was a good touch. And thank you for allowing players to switch between skis and boards as they wanted to.

What you didn't like about the game - be frank, but don't rant. If you didn't like something, state why and move on.
- I didn't like the rather shallow unlockables in the game. Outside of the yeti and the ubers, there really weren't any items to get. After you've gotten all the ubers, you can just use a code to get the Yeti outfit, instead of trying to get all the uber icons for everyone.
- I hated that some characters only had 1 or 2 outfits. 3 should have been the minimum - and how do you expect people to like the new characters like Felix and Maya when you give them NO VOICES and only ONE OUTFIT? Even Zoe only has two! Unacceptable.
- The fact that so many of the runs could be glitched out if you know how - for example, you can use the manual reset to pass a lot of the flags in slalom without touching them. You can reset OUTSIDE the halfpipe on History Lesson and jump around getting the multipliers outside the halfpipe, and I bet if I looked, I'd find select shortcuts in places. C'mon guys, you're not making SSX look any better by making the games even MORE glitchy.

What you missed from this version - tell EA what you sorely missed from this version of SSX.
- It goes without saying, but new tracks. Recycling old ones is a copout, even with the supposed "skinned so much you don't recognize them (yeah, right)" angle.
- CHARACTERS NEED TO TALK - just that simple. The game loses a huge amount of atmosphere when they dont' say anything. This is inexcusable.
- They need to have bolt-ons. Not skins, but bolt-ons.
- THERE NEEDS TO BE A TOP 5 SCORE screen. You can't even see your records outside the career highlights screen.
- Bring back replay please.

What suggestions you would like to see in the next game apart from what was featured in this game or any of the previous.
- The next one needs to be cross-platform, and a FULL version of SSX. Not some half-hearted, "do the best we can with what we have" version. It needs to be a version that introduced as many changes to the system as SSX 3 did, and it needs to be just as big, if not bigger, in scope as SSX 3 was. Every other game in the series will be judged against SSX 3 since it was the peak in the series so far.
- IT NEEDS ONLINE PLAY, no doubt about it.

Final Score: 8.2 out of 10. It was a solid entry in the series, better than On Tour, but not as good as SSX 3, SSX Tricky or even the first SSX.

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Thanks a lot for this.

I have a question..
What makes the original SSX a better game?

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Thanks for this review, Gondee!
It gives me a relief that the game is not bad.

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Gondee, as always, you give us a great and unbiased review.

I think you need to change that a bit.

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- KotW -

thanks for the review Gondee

one question - is it worth buying a wii for?

edit (just read Red Gambit post so forget the above )

When I was reading your review I was expecting you to give it a 5/10 or less. So many negatives yet you give it an 8.2? Judging by your review it seems to me that the negatives far outweigh the positives. Half of the things you liked are pretty basic: control scheme, atmosphere, tournament mode... while the negatives like the lack of unlockables, new tracks, talking, bolt-ons/outfits, replay, online, top 5 scores, and stupid glitches, would seemingly have a bigger impact on your gaming experience, given that you contrast it with SSX3.

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Are you a patriot? Then spend 1 hour reading this site.

There's a chance to win the game for free right now!

on G4

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http://www.fancorps.com/northernstate/s ... eadpool247


I even wanna be me! -- Zoe "Royal" Payne, SSX3

Yeah, Gondee I think everyone wants to know if really that much of an addition and if it's worth getting a Wii for.

Well, somebody won it. Not sure who, but it wasn't me.

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http://www.fancorps.com/northernstate/s ... eadpool247


I even wanna be me! -- Zoe "Royal" Payne, SSX3

Yeah Gondee, thanks for the reveiw... all I would have probably said was: "it was fun, not the greatest... but it'll keep you playing for a good few weeks" XD XD

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Very well said. I agree with everything you wrote except I think 3>Blur>Tricky>1>On Tour.

It's a big step back in the right direction, but missing some key things to make it better than 3.

I can't believe you feel that 3 is better than Tricky or the original SSX. Those games are far superior. IMO the games have gotten worse with each title. Still fun to play, but certainly not the acclaimed titles that SSX or Tricky were.

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Once a nonrespected master... Once people saw what I was all about, I rose into the hall of masters

i.e. "I can't believe your opinion is different from mine?" C'mon now. As long as the person doesn't put On Tour as best, it's all good.

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This is a block of text that can be added to posts you make. There is a 255 character limit. BBCode may be used in your face.

Hence my statement of IMO. I do agree with that statement that as On Tour is a disgrace to the series.

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Once a nonrespected master... Once people saw what I was all about, I rose into the hall of masters

I think about 95% of is agree on that, if not higher.

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- KotW -

I've got 6 things I liked, 3 I didn't like, and a whole bunch that was missing. The missing stuff gets a lot of a pass, because this isn't SSX 5 and wasn't intended to be. It's (repeat ad-nauseum) SSX: Liberty City Stories. The only thing missing that I would deem a negative is the lack of voices. That really was a bad omission.


Fixx0red.

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dammit gondee you are making me hunger for another SSX game. Pardon the french, but man, despite the faults that I already knew about, I am now wondering if I shouldn't pick up a Wii for SSX..... I have heard the soundtrack is amazing too.......

Only 2 outfits......?! Sounds like, on the whole, the game was a rush job...but its still SSX.....ah, the agony of it all!

Ha ha, just kidding. If I had a Wii I'd definitely rent it (not so trusting of EA Canada these days) but seeing as how I don't I guess I am just gonna let it slide away.

I still can't believe with all the success of SSX3 that a full on triple A sequel hasn't been developed yet............... :sigh

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Id disagree with that Avenged Sevenfold comment most likely.... cuz they arent emo rock.. fo remo rock youd look mroe too MCR Panic at the disco,Hawthorne Heights Armor for sleep...... emo needs to die quickly before it does end up invading SSX...... never know what EA will do next for voices.. next a screwy soundtrack..... Avenged Sevenfold is more Hard Rock.... metalcore around that area... they tried sounding like a mixed Maiden Metallica and bunch of other Metal bands back then..... blehhh doesnt bother me but i still liked the Electronica mixes that fused with Metal and Rock.. such as Autopilot Off's Clockworks... =]

I have to disagree with you here. Maybe you felt that SSX Tricky/1 had a better way of gameplay, but I think that content-wise, SSX 3 is the top end of the series.

Glitches excluded it is the game with the most features. Biggest mountain (20-30 minutes down it), online play with leaderboards, different events (Big air, superpipe, race, slopestyle, backcountry), etc.

But yes, I could see an argument to the first two being better if they had online play.

^I agree (except the online play part).

Is there any Multiplay in Blur?

Yeah there are two multiplay types, a two player split screen or four player hot seat. The splitscreen isnt that great, mainly because it resets you if you get too far behind your opponent just like it did in on tour. I havent tried the hot seat yet though.

Yako591 - 'tis much the pity that the 2 player resets you like OT as I've got mates I split screen race against every week and we dumped OT because of the resets

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Some of my Architectural renders

One suggestion I have would be to improve the scoring system for the ubers.

I like using the gestures to pull off ubers for the most part, but I think the scoring for the ubers should be revamped.

The scoring should be such that an easy uber would score the lowest while the hardest ubers would score the highest. And every gesture should be assigned a score in ascending order of difficulty.

The current system is that the 1st 4 ubers are scored lower, but then all the advanced unlocked ubers basically have the same score. This means, that there really isn't any incentive to try to pull off some of the harder ubers such as the clef shape, when u basically get the same score for pulling off a double Z, which is significantly easier to do.

In regards to the gestures, I can pretty pull off all the ubers, except for the clef. I can maybe do that 1 out of 10 tries.

Also, sometimes, if I try a certain gesture, it will register as a different gesture. Like if I try to do the M gesture, sometimes it will think I'm doing the double loop gestures (not the unlocked one but the 1st four free gestures).