SSX3

 GameCube, SSX3 (2003) game

As if in sympathy with the distant past when Nintendo made the questionable decision to push back '1080º Snowboarding' for Europe because they didn't think people would buy it outside of the winter months, I found myself wanting a wintry game to play, the colder weather making it more immersive, to tide me over before I had to clear all decks to make way for the Christmas 'Zelda' - I thought a nice, quick downhill racer would plug a gap, but what I didn't realise was the sheer breadth of challenges and achievements that make this game a laster, to the extent I had to share the Christmas holidays between it and 'Zelda' when I much prefer to concentrate on one main game at a time. It's a tribute to it that I actively wanted to get back to finishing Peak 3 when I was playing the most accomplished 'Zelda' to its day, and became a nice surprise for me as what I would call a classic, not something that happens very often, especially with a game I'd never played before, and have no nostalgic ties to. I should say the snowboarding genre in general has always interested me ever since I carved out tracks in the original '1080º,' a great simulation-like racing game. I would also put 'Snowboard Kids,' the 'Mario Kart' of the mountains, in the upper bracket (more specifically for the wonderful multiplayer which I will take to my grave as one of the most special examples of shared gaming I've ever experienced), while the competition to the 'SSX' series on GameCube, '1080 Avalanche' was something of a disappointment (still a good game, but not enough of a leap a new machine should bring).

I'd never played any 'SSX' before, mainly because it struck me as being very trick-oriented and I'm quite a lazy racer: I don't want any distractions from the twitch-gaming of speeding along as fast as I can go, so no manual gears, no boosts and especially no tricks! Okay, so most racing games have accoutrements hanging on their use of some description whether that be a boost meter that needs filling as in 'Burnout' or weapons and other pickups, and I'm not too bothered about all that, but it really is the trick side of things where you have to learn complicated combos (much like in fighting games, a genre I'm none too keen on for the same reason), and bring on early-onset arthritis from all the uncomfortable finger-twisting and button-mashing. In this game's case it would have been a combination of NGC Magazine's positive review and an openness to explore more older games I had the slightest interest in pursuing, partly for the cheap cost, partly for filling in some historical gaps in knowledge, so I'd owned it a few years just for that time I was ready to try it out, and this was the time. It's strange that of the two 'Cube games I played in 2025, one was my biggest disappointment ('XIII'), and the other, this, was the biggest surprise - it's not that I didn't expect anything, but I was pretty sure it'd be a three-star game (good, competent, worth playing), at best, and potentially less if I didn't get on with the tricking side of it.

As predicted, it wasn't the 'pure' racer I would have preferred, with the adrenaline meter requiring filling in order to boost best speed ahead, an essential part of the racing, if not as important in every challenge or event. That was far from my biggest irritation, however: the interface was fine, though you could tell it was a third-party, cross-platform port, just a little clunky in places, the biggest example of this being when you try to save: Quit Game >Yes, Save progress before quitting >Yes, choose a Save file >Done, confirm name >Done, Would you like to overwrite? >Overwrite, Save complete >Continue... That's six buttons to save, not even counting hitting the pause to take you to the menu in the first place! The worst offence is that whenever you go a little way off the beaten track you're told you're OFF LIMITS and summarily returned to the 'proper' place. This gives the lie to it being an entire mountain for you to skip down freely and causes all kinds of frustration when you merely want to exercise your freedom during the search for collectable snowflakes dotted about the landscape and you're constantly told off for exploring! Then there are more minor issues such as the computer voice saying "M-comm" every time you hit the Start button to choose options from the pause menu. It's not necessary and while it may sound pedantic and irritable, when you're redoing a challenge over and over and have to keep restarting you really don't need any extra irritation!

These were among my bigger gripes, but right from the off I was annoyed by the music (quickly turned it over to the ambient sounds of the mountain, much more serene and realistic), and especially the obnoxious characters spouting inane dialogue - you could say it's an age thing, but I wouldn't have thought any better of them twenty-odd years ago when it came out! Again, I turned speech down to 0, but then when you do win and a rival has something to say, you miss the dialogue because there are no subtitles. Even the way characters start off (other than in races where they're eager to leap ahead), it's from a sitting position as if they can't be bothered (I know, I know - if they were standing on the board they'd start to slide downhill, but it didn't help!), and then there's the issue of no trick tutorial so you have to work out what Indys, Ollys and Umphreys (or whatever), are by experimentation of trial and error - again, it's laziness from me, but that's the kind of thing I expected from the game. My guess is that this would be designed to appeal to those with an actual interest in the extreme sport itself (or who'd played the previous titles in the series), not merely a console race enthusiast like me, so you could say it's fairly advanced, with an expectation players will know the ropes. In that case you'd already be well aware of what tricks are called and what's needed to pull them off, but for someone that doesn't, it wasn't very accessible - the same can be said for the 'realism' of having to visit the Lodge, situated on a specific track on each Peak, in order to alter your character, upgrade stats, buy stuff and see Career Highlights goals. It is more realistic to have to travel somewhere to do stuff like that, but it would've made more sense to have it available from the menu.

I will give it credit for its scope and sense of progression, there's a nice RPG element to things where you can pay to upgrade various aspects of your boarder (though the visual side was limited - my character was Mac Fraser and I tried to make him look like Kensuke Kimachi from '1080º,' but couldn't get closer than a similar hat and jacket, but in the wrong colours), and improve your chances in events using money you've earned with tricks and victories, and while I thought it'd be a fairly short game to whizz through, much like '1080' and 'SK' were, there's a wealth of things to keep you occupied. Oddly, the racing part was never my favourite, opponents aren't that difficult to take on once you know the tracks reasonably well and the only challenge is in the boss races when someone throws down the gauntlet - the final race on Peak 3 for example, 'All Peak Race' (a bit misleading since it's only the first two Peaks), can take almost half an hour to get down, and if you lose you have to do it all again, not to mention trying to beat the time to achieve a Gold Medal. Medals are yet another way in which the lifespan is extended: at time of writing I've only managed a 94% completion with one more Freestyle event in which to achieve Gold ('Kickdoubt' - seems impossible to get the 750,000 points or above you need), and five Career Highlights left undone (mini challenges like holding a Handplant for so many seconds, for example). But beyond that there are even Platinum Medals to be won (not that I have the patience and dedication for that - I wouldn't even have realised they went to Platinum except I won one out of the blue!).

In keeping with the 'realism' I mentioned before, there isn't much fanfare when you do beat a Challenge or achieve a Highlight, the onscreen details merely change to an ordinary Freeride and nothing appears onscreen to emphasise you'd succeeded at something, which was quite strange when the tone is so often celebratory with fireworks exploding around you and money racking up. Freeride was actually one of the more pleasing parts of the game, roaming the mountainside in search of routes and shortcuts, and most importantly the snowflakes placed around, some requiring real thought and experimentation since they're just out of reach or up on some line you have no idea how to get to. I found that quite rewarding, especially as you tick off the total on each section, whether it be searching forensically every last anomaly, or stumbling upon the missing snowflake entirely unexpectedly - I spent hours on 'Kickdoubt' (again!), in the caves of Session point 5 where I believed the last snowflake in the level was going to be hidden in the collapsible stalactites hanging from the rocky ceiling, smashed by intense speed and precise control... only to try another time and find it was on the last ledge high above, just before the caves! The satisfaction of ticking these things off was a large part of the attraction of the game, partly because many snowflakes were deceptively easy to spot, making you think it an achievable goal.

The other favoured part of the experience were a number of the Challenges which ranged from slaloming between flags on the track, to the difficult stringing together of named tricks before time runs out. The latter was so tough, but again, so satisfying once success came and all these things eventually bumped the score up for me. It helped that the mountain is attractive, even beautiful at times with much varied terrain and weather effects, the ability to jump to various spots of each section using the Session option, lots of secret routes and dramatic falls or environmental effects, although, much like the hyped avalanches of the latter '1080,' they didn't have all that much bearing most of the time - small and occasional, always in the same place and with little ill effect, you simply ride them down or get pushed over, but I suppose that was all they could really do. It took some time, but the mountain did eventually begin to unfold to me and by Peak 2 I was loving it. It may be that there was just too much to do at the beginning, it takes time to learn the ropes and where to go because although Off Limits happen far too often, there's still a sizeable playable area to speed down. I liked that it had a hardcore sentiment that didn't kowtow to casual gaming, you had to put some work in and it does make me wonder if there's anything similar on Switch that could obviously break out of the technical limitations of that time to provide the definitive snowboarding or mountain experience in general.

Seeing the stats for each section of each Peak and gradually beating each of them was greatly satisfying and the worst things you had to do were probably the most pleasing to have achieved, which gives me hope I may keep going back until I've finally got that ridiculously tough last Gold Medal and the final Career Highlights. It's a game that stood worthy of being my Christmas game regardless of 'Zelda,' which is high praise indeed - it helps that racing is one of my favourite genres, but as noted, the actual racing side of it was rarely that integral or satisfying, nor did I ever get to try the multiplayer which looked pretty comprehensive, so I'm sure if I was regularly playing with others as I did when this was released it would have been a regular contender in the disc drive. Even the fact that many of the Challenges you could discover on a Freeride, depicted by a column of coloured light, would turn a different colour once you'd completed them to show the same Challenge now had a tougher variation, was a pleasing progression, and while I expect 'Zelda' to last a good few months into the year, this might be an ideal accompaniment any time I want a bash at aiming for 100% completion or Platinum medals.

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