The Gravitude Bar • SSX 2012 Overview by whoozwah

Compiled by whoozwah.

WEBSITES

TRICK SYSTEM
---Flow---

Trick system is called Flow. It's designed to eliminate/punish exploits. Your flow multiplier will fluctuate based on your continuous string of tricks and momentum going down a run.
If you get a high multiplier and bail, you can still maintain a modest multiplier based on your performance in the run up to that point.
No handplants. They're counter-intuitive to Flow.
Natural halfpipes WILL drop your flow if you stay in it too long. It is desirable to hit it once or twice and move on to maintain momentum going down the run.
There is a trick combo mechanic which is time based. The bigger the trick, the longer the combo stays alive before it eventually times out and gets added to the overall score.
You can accrue bonus points for "cashing in" a long combo so there is definite incentive to try to keep a combo going for as long as possible.
manuals are present and can still be used to keep your combo going like in the past.
hitting flares get you a bit of boost as it's considered a trick and keeps your combo going.
Performing duplicate tricks will cause your flow multiplier to begin dropping.

---Tricky---

There are 12 base grabs, all tweakable.
Once you enter Tricky state those grabs are upgraded to ubers which are also all tweakable.
Once you enter Super Tricky, those grabs are upgraded yet again to super ubers which are also all tweakable.
It is at this point that you have access to your chosen character's signature uber trick. You also have unlimited boost as long as you keep Super Tricky mode alive.
It is necessary to keep a trick combo going to maintain Super Tricky mode.
There are 6 base grind tricks, 6 uber grinds, 6 super uber grinds accessible in their respective Tricky modes.

---General Trick info---

There is no uber trick setup a la SSX 3. Everyone has the same set of tricks except for signature ubers.
uber tricks can be held out which starts a loop in the animation until released.
It is undesirable to change tricks mid jump. Your best bet is to choose a grab and a rotation and hold it for the duration of the jump.
Manually initiated grinds on sharp edges are worth more points than red rail grinds.
The longer you preload your jump it preps the helicopter to line up with your jump so you can trick off it.
You need to let go of the trick before you hit the ground to land a trick successfully and the level of trick it is determines how long you can hold it before you must let go.

CHARACTERS

The playable characters in the game are: Mac, Elise, Kaori, Moby, Zoe, Psymon, Griff, Tane, Alex, Thor, Eddie (currently only as a preorder bonus or in the Limted Edition depending on what part of the world you're in) and Travis Rice (obtained via special promo code which has yet to be publicly released).
You unlock characters by playing through World Tour or by buying them with credits earned in Explore.
Every character has full voice acting and are all done by new voice actors.
DJ Atomika is returning and his voice actor is reprising his role.
Characters will have some lines in their native languages as well as in English.
There will be some character interaction before races, in helicopters and on mountains.
The characters will interact back and forth with the helicopter pilots.
The three helicopter pilots in the game are: Red, Dragonfly and Wizard.
The pilots are predetermined by mountain range and as such you cannot manually choose your pilot.
You cannot play as the pilots.

GEAR/STATS
---Outfits---

Each character only has 1 base outfit. There are 256 recolors for each character. 16 colors on top and bottom. Each of these 256 recolors have glowing versions which brings the total outfit tally for each character to 512.
Outfits can also have attribute perks attached to them such as big head, big hands etc.
There is no color wheel for easily choosing which recolor you want. They show up semi-randomly in the storefront each time you open it.

---Survival Gear---

The required gear for rock, trees and avalanche is armor which requires no user interaction.
The required gear for cold is solar panels which requires no user interaction.
The required gear for ice is ice axes which requires no user interaction.
The required gear for whiteout is pulse goggles which requires no user interaction.
The required gear for darkness is the headlamp which requires no user interaction.
The required gear for gravity is the wingsuit which is manually controlled.
The required gear for thin air is the oxygen tank which is manually controlled.
Survival gear will wear out over time as you're doing a run but resets to full strength if you restart or start a new run.

---Snowboards---

There are roughly 1,000 boards (approximately 700 of which are community submitted) with semi-randomly generated stats.
Not all the Facebook boards made it into the game for licensing reasons.
Elite snowboards are level 6. The advantage gained from them is temporary however the design is not and is exclusive to those who preordered.
Board designs are not interchangeable.

---Geotags---

Geotags are user-generated collectibles that you can place at any time while you're playing as long as you have one equipped.
There are 2 types of Geotags. The user generated Geotags are circular orbs and are worth varying amounts based on how long it's been in the world.
Each Geotag has a max value and it has a 24hr countdown timer. For the player that places it, the value increases over time from drop to expiration. For players looking to pick it up, the value decreases over time from drop to expiration.
The amount of Geotags you can carry at a time increases as you level up.
The preset ones are snowflakes a la SSX/Tricky and are worth varying amounts of credits when picked up.
When you collect a snowflake it's gone forever regardless of what character you used to pick it up.
Fireworks go off when you collect a snowflake but it's very low key.
There's a snowflake hidden in the Rockies worth 1,000,000 credits.

---Stats and Progression---

You level up by earning XP and credits in game.
You cannot level up with your wallet meaning buying credit packs won't earn you new levels. you have to earn those yourself through playing.
The level cap is 10 in the shipped game with room to grow later if devs decide to expand it. First roughly 4 levels are really fast. Then it slows down.
The actual character level affects what gear you have access to for purchasing. The higher your level, the better gear you can get.
Loadout slots expand as you level up.
There are max attribute points for the different gear categories so as you level up and get better gear the extra character attribute points you start out with will even out. This effectively means that in the beginning, your character can dictate how well you perform to a degree but as you play it will become more the gear you're using that dictates your performance.
Badges you earn through playing will serve as in game stats but there's not an official "stats" window that keeps track of time played or anything of that nature.

---General gear info---

Some gear will be personalized for specific characters.
Mods are essentially one-time-use perks that give you boosts to different attributes. Some of these have a time limit for you to purchase them.
Content in the storefront (during your loadout) is shown based on the currently selected drop, event type, player level and shows new content every time it's opened.

ONLINE FEATURES
---Explore---

Explore is the main event of the game. All the events available in World Tour are available from the get go and the remaining drops have relatively nominal unlock fees attached to them.
There are AI characters in Explore which function as baselines for gold, silver, bronze performances. These are non-changing ghost runs set by the development team.
Ghosts of your friends' runs will show up in Explore which you can challenge. If you succeed in besting your friend's ghost you earn credits. If if takes multiple attempts, you will earn credits for the successful attempt but your friend will earn credits for each time you failed.
in Explore after completing a survival drop it takes you back to the top again and you essentially survive as long as you can until you run out of rewinds.
each subsequent survival run gets harder as you go down it.
The exact spots where your friends have perished during survival runs are highlighted on the course.
Explore mode can, to a certain extent be used as a substitute for free ride.
There is no collision detection in Explore.

---Global Events---

Global Events are real-time ongoing tournaments on every drop in the game set up by EA.
Each Global Event is timed. You can make runs as many times as you want during the time limit and at the end it takes your best run and makes a leaderboard and you can earn credits based on what bracket (which is percentage based) you placed in.
Brackets are Diamond, Platium, Gold, Silver, Bronze.
Some Global Events have an entry fee. Some do not.
It is possible to create custom Global Events tailored to your specifications.
The parameters you can set for custom global events include: event type, time limit, entry fee, show standings toggle, show ghost leader toggle, payout bracket, who can enter, max gear level, wingsuit toggle, rewind toggle.
There is no 1 RUN ONLY option in custom global events.
There's an algorithm that figures out how many people get rendered on a mountain at a given time during Global Events. Friends will be rendered first and if server load allows, other riders will phase in or out.
The only ghost in global events is the person in the bracket ahead of you.
There is no collision detection in Global Events.

---RiderNet---

RiderNet is a recommendation engine that lets you keep up with your friends, find new drops to try and find new people to play with.
Ridernet recommends friends based on your skill level.
There's no manual invite system via RiderNet but just by playing it will automatically send global invites to your friends based on what events you're playing in. This is done by creating a clickable notification on your friends' RiderNet wall that you've started an event, placed a geotag, set a top score etc.
There's a rivals view in RiderNet that shows all your friends and their recent activity.
RiderNet allows you to show or hide friends activity on your Ridernet wall.
The end-of-run breakdown will give you recommendations based on friend activity and will let you jump straight to other events.
RiderNet allows you to "Like" drops and will recommend new drops based on the properties of drops you've liked.

---General online info---

There's no latency online which is a trade off for no synchronous competition.
Voice chat is not supported on either PS3 or 360 in-game. 360 players can utilize Party Chat however to voice chat.
Xbox Live Silver members get access to the entire RiderNet enabled Explore mode. You must have Xbox Live Gold to compete in Global Events.
EA's online pass does not restrict you from playing online. It only keeps you from earning in-game currency from any events you win online. You still place on leaderboards, you still unlock trophies/achievements. It allows anyone who buys the game new or used to see and do everything in the game. But without online pass you can only earn credits offline which is still enough to unlock all content albeit not as quickly as you otherwise could.

WORLD TOUR

Campaign is called World Tour which is touted as an extended tutorial showcasing roughly 30 percent of the total content.
The story in a nutshell is that Team SSX is traveling all over the world filming each other conquering the planet. Griff Simmons feels left out and so he is trying to beat them to the punch.
Zoe is the main the character.
Zoe and DJ Atomika narrate the the World Tour mode and Atomika provides updates on your progress.
World Tour takes roughly 12 hours to beat.
You just need bronze to advance in each event.
World Tour is not linear. You can choose which region to go to next.
Events in world tour start in a more traditional lineup against changing AI that support collision detection. You can bump into them and knock them over but you cannot actually throw punches.
You cannot change the number of AI's or their difficulty.
If you're acclimated to playing against changing AI, World Tour may be a more desirable mode than Explore.
Unlike in Explore or Global Events, in World Tour once you conquer a Deadly Descent, you move on and are not taken back to the top of the drop for a second lap.

TRACK/CONTENT INFO

No 30 minute run. The longest drop in the game is "Serenity" which lasts 6 minutes roughly if you trick it.
No multipliers, speed boost, trick boost pickups in the levels.
No night-time city track like Merqury City/Metro City.
some tracks are more linear than others in regards to splitting off in different paths.
There are 2 tutorial levels. 1 is freefalling and that teaches you how to do air tricks. The other is a ground tutorial that teaches you how to do basic manuevers on the ground. These levels can be replayed as many times as needed.
Happiness from SSX 3 is somewhere in Alaska
There are 2 survival tracks per Deadly Descent. There's a "warmup" track and the main event Deadly Descent.
There are no survival events on Mt. Fuji
Certain runs will require equipping certain pieces of gear to either succeed or post top times/scores.
There are no customizable session markers.
Event type choice is determined by the elements in the track. The heirarchy goes Survival>Race>Trick. In other words, if the drop can be a survival drop it can be anything. If a drop can be a race, it can be a trick drop as well. Ultimately this means you can trick on EVERY drop in the game.
Restarting to the top of a run takes about 3-4 seconds.
You cannot die in a race or trick event. Health bar shows up if you have armor equipped though.

CONTROLS

Classic controls have been retrofitted to the new game as closely as possible.
No sixaxis, move or kinect support.
There is auto balance for grinding.
You do not need to hold the grind button to grind on red rails, only sharp edges.
Grind tricks are done with face buttons, square, triangle and circle. single tap or double tap to access them.
There is an autocorrect based on the board rating. The better the boards you use, the less autocorrect you have.

REWINDS

Rewinding during a Trick event results in a negative point trick thus reducing your flow.
Rewinding in a race event has a built in time penalty as the world continues moving forward while you rewind.
Rewinds are limited in survival events.
Rewinds can last up to 15 seconds.
Rewinds can be used as a "poor man's" replay by not touching the controller after you've completed the rewind as it will replay what you've just done, however this is done at the expense of whatever penalty is present for the particular event you're currently in.

AUDIO

The game features a remixing engine called Harmony which will modify whatever song is playing based on the player's actions.
The game supports custom soundtracks which can also be remixed on the fly via Harmony.
You have the option of creating 4 different playlists in game. Race, Trick, Survive and User interface. You will be able to mix and match on-disc soundtrack and custom soundtrack. To be more specific, for each playlist, you can choose to have all custom or all on-disc. You cannot mix and match individual songs within

playlists.
ID3 tag information is supported for custom soundtracks.
You cannot set specific songs to specific drops.
Audio options are as follows:
- pilot speech volume
- rider speech volume
- sfx volume
- music remix toggle
- super tricky off/loop/standard
- music volume
- personal music volume
With tricky loop off it'll just call out "tricky" when you hit tricky or super tricky.

SSX MERCHANDISE

No limited edition or collector's edition in North America.
SSX shirts MAY be on sale in the future.
No hard copy run of the character comics or other swag planned.
No plans for physical soundtrack at the moment however it can be obtained digitally via iTunes/Amazon.

GENERAL/MISC. INFO

Rahzel is not in this game. You can still call your Mama in the room and show her how great you are though
Members of the development team will be playing online.
There MAY be hud-free riding in the future but you cannot turn it off at the moment.
Shockwave cannot be turned off.
There are death animations if you fail a survival run.
Loading screens give gameplay tips.
There are close to 200 badges that you can earn in different categories like "world tour" "explore" "race" "survive" etc which tie into trophies/achievements.


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