SSX3

EA's hugely successful snowboarding franchise returns for a third outing. Jen tackles the three peaks and lives to tell the tale. She went prepared with her best woolly hat and mittens with string through the arms.

As the only member of the team to actually snowboard it seems I was a natural choice of Harry's to tackle the latest SSX game. Frankly though peeps, SSX bears as much resemblance to real snowboarding as pootling around the M60 in a Micra does to Formula One racing. That's not a criticism of SSX, it's a great game, but it's not really about the real sport – it's more about outlandish stunts and crazy courses.

The EA Sports Big team has come up with a novel idea for the structure of SSX3. All the events take place on one mountain. Now before you get in a tizzy, that still means a huge variety of slopes – it's just that they are set surrounding three peaks within a mountain range. The game begins on the lowest peak and with a nod to GTA (like everything else these days) allows the player to move around on the mountain and just mess around on the board, or ride to the start of various events.

This is a cool feature – it's great to be able to practice tricks and go in search of big air without having to actually start an event. Don't worry about this getting in the way of playing the game – there's a pause menu that will transport the player to whatever unlocked location she likes. Events include the usual SSX racing, big air and stunt pipe competitions. If dressing up is your thing – then the lodge is the place to go to buy new items for the rider. It's not just dressing up games though – rider attributes and new boards are bought from the lodge too.

But let's get out onto the powder and see what we make of it. Well first impressions are very good indeed. The graphics are super smooth – especially the transitions between different stunts. Many different snow and ice surfaces create a very realistic looking mountain and the scenery objects, jumps and drops are as outlandish as ever. Controlling the game is best with the PS2 pad but that's a personal preference. All versions look great – though you could argue that this is because EA can never be bothered making Xbox and Cube versions look better than the PS2 one. The Xbox version is slightly prettier than PS2 but there's not much in it.

The sound is a treat – with lots of booming modern music of the type that really annoys old farts like Harry. Music is played via the games radio station which blasts out tunes and the DJs keep the player informed of mountain events – even to the point of mentioning recent successes on the slopes by the player.

[Jen]

SSX3 is a very good game, but I don't think the perfect example of extreme winter sports. It's still possible to get stuck in scenery at times and have to use the reset-rider button – which is annoying. The other problem is that although the mountain is supposedly very open it is all too easy to leap from areas that are out of bounds yet not signposted. Other than that, it's a great fun packed game that does exactly what it says on the tin.

[Harry]

I didn't enjoy SSX3 as much as I enjoyed the original, probably as it's aimed at people who want to grind and UBER their way down the whole course. All this leaping about tends to leave me cold even though I enjoy the actual racing down the hill elements of the game. The only real annoyance for me was the lack of widescreen support on the Xbox, which aptly demonstrates where EA's interests lie.

[Alex]

This isn't really my kind of thing at all but I loved it to bits. The graphics are funky and chunky and the sound is very good indeed. Okay, it's not the most realistic of sports games but that's missing the point. This is about leaping around on a plank while falling down a mountain and it's ace at capturing the feeling of big jumps and vast scenery. It'd definitely a winner.