SSX Deadly Descents trailer

It's about friggin time! I've been waiting since SSX3 for the next worthwhile installment of the series (sorry Blur & On Tour weren't it). I don't mind the new, more realistic imagining as long as they don't tinker with the controls. Honestly SSX3 was a perfect snowboarding game and I still enjoy playing it today. I hope they enhance the multiplayer to include wager matches introduced in COD Black Ops. And please bring back the series mainstays Mac, Elise, Moby, Allegra, Griff, Kaori, Zoe, Psymon, and Nate.

I have high hopes for SSX: DD, I'll be following this one till release. If you're a fan of SSX I recomend checking out http://www.merqurycity.com/ it's a great community of SSX fans!

GoPro 2010 Highlights

I've tried to once in the past to record myself snowboarding while holding the camera in my hand....not easy and the results look like cloverfield shakey cam shenanigans. Now if I had one of these little gopro cams my video's would've probably been more "viewable". This camera will make an awesome Christmas gift for that friend that enjoys Mountain Biking, Snowboarding, Skiing, Kayacking, Surfing, Skateboarding, cliff diving....you get the picture.

http://www.goprocamera.com/

Judge me by my size do you? The Antonov of skateboards

The spirit of innovation lives!!! Why ride solo when all your wanna be Tony Hawk friends can shred together???

Game Review: MotorStorm

I got Motorstorm bundled with my PS3, but never got around to throwing up a review of the game. Motorstorm is a week long "festival" in Arizona's Monument Valley. The game's intro is hilariously over serious with that gruff old man announcer at the beginning, once you get past stuffy old announcer man the festivities begin. The games graphics are not what we saw in that E3 teaser but I suppose it's better to aim high right? One of the first things I noticed about Motorstorm, the sound level is way higher than any PS2 game I have, maybe because the game is on Blu ray....I don't really know. The music is loud and hard very fitting for Motorstorm.
The environment is well designed and the level of detail is not achievable on the PS2, the closest comparison is GT4's Grand Canyon track.
The game offers eight tracks on or offline; The Grizzly, Sidewinder Glutch, Rockhopper, Rain God Mesa, The Tenderizer, Dust Devil, The Mudpool, Coyote Rage. The tracks may not have much variety but they make up for it in design, each course has sections that branch out and offer multiple paths that intertwine and offer different types of terain from mud to rock to loose gravel. Other than that there's not much variety to the environment which makes sense since this "festival" takes place in Arizona's Monument Valley, but I still would've liked to have a bit more variety.
Motorstorm offers seven different types of vehicles; MX bikes, ATV's, Buggies, Rally Cars, Racing Trucks, Mud Pluggers, and Big Rigs. Do you want to go really fast and risk life and limb? Jump on a Bike (the crash sequences are spectacular!) Do you want to bully your way to the finish line and crush the gravel below your feet climb into a Big Rig. Those are the two extremes in the vehicle selection spectrum. L2 & R2 are used for the gas and break and R3 acts as your boost ignitor. If you thought you were going fast before hold down the boost for a few seconds but watch your boost meter or you'll pull a Challenger!
Motorstorm's online game is just as manic as offline and you can bust out your best Anakin Skywalker on a ATV impression with eleven of your friends. I set up a clan event where we had around 6 people racing together and I never experienced any lag. Motorstorm also supports chat via BT or USB headset, it's open mic but sounds infinitly better than CoD4's chat functions.
The servers are divided into US East, Central, West etc.
Some custom features include time of day, track, public or private admittance and vehicle types.
Motorstorm's like poptarts...IT'S CRAZZZY GOOD!

7/10

Bonus: Motorstorm 2 teaser coming atcha!

Game Review: SSX3

Back when the PS2 assumed the throne from it's predecessor there was one game from Electronic Arts BIG that snuck under the industry radar. SSX yet another Xtreme sports title for an already flooded market, this gem was judged prematurely though, touted as "yet another addition to the extreme sports genre". Well when SSX fell into the hands of reviewers they sang a different tune, no longer was the genre confined to ultra cheese 1 liners and horrible B band music, SSX broke the mold and created uber un-realistic terrains with gorgeously animated surroundings, fun characters and a fitting sound track with a DJ with witty commentary.Boost forward to Oct 2003 and EA BIG does it again, and not a simple sequel either but in some respects a brand new BIGer game! With SSX3 you no longer travel around the world from one venue to another, now you live on one mountain with three peaks! This new system makes the whole experience more cohesive and adds a new exploration aspect to the game (much like GTA3) which is fantastic with the absolutely breath taking environments that seamlessly flow together from section to section. And this mountain is BIG, seriously, unlike SSX1 just freeriding from the apex of peak 2 to the bottom of metro (mercury) city will take a good 30 minutes! And the width of the mountain means more variety and freedom to choose your own path. Another nice addition to the environment is the occasional avalanche, strong gusts of wind, collapsing glaciers, and falling trees. With all of these effects the game still runs as at a smooth 60 fps even with our favorite character (Elise) going for the gold.Now to the characters of SSX3, this game is a veritble family reunion for all EA BIG characters! All of the boarders from SSX1, Tricky, and the noobs from 3 are in this game along with some fan favorites like strech from NBA Street. SSX3's characters are a tad more realistic this time around but retain all of their personalities..... Elise is still an uber hotie-self absorbed border X bitch, Mac is still a punk, Kaori is still a bubbling wok of cheeriness, you get the point. With all these varying personalities EA BIG still found room for some new editions like Griff (based on a real life pint sized protege), Allegra (the fiery red head out to de-throne Elise), Nate Logan (brawny man on a board). And if you really want to get every character there's even a cow that rides a fence, a sumo wrestler who rides reeds of bamboo and a snowman who rides a flexible flier sled! I love the way EA BIG has taken the unique music style and boosted it to the next level, before you had tracks interlaced with sound clips from a DJ, now you have a full time radio station show hosted by DJ Atomika! You get weather updates, music, event updates, music, town announcements, music, SSX competitor updates, more music, commercials, and more music. This new system lends itself heavily to grand theft auto in this way and it does just as good a job at adding another layer of emersiveness. While riding off line and boosting your characters stats DJ Atomica spins and talks like a real life radio station host, helping add to the feeling you're really at the mountain. And the selection of tracks is BIG (sorry ), varied and well worth a CD release of it's own!But why should you bother completing all the BIG Challenges and going back to defend your title and go freeriding all over each of the three peaks in search of $nowflakes? To win money of course! And what you do win your cold (pun intended) hard cash is up to you, buy new gear for your rider like:gloves, beanies, baseball hats, helmets, tops, bottoms, new boards, brown paper bags, tiaras, halos, butterfly wings, angel wings, bunny ears, new boots, googles, sunglasses, bandanas, collectible cards, toys figures of the SSX characters, posters, videos, music collections, and character attributes which will help you later when you challenge someone online!Ok here's the payoff for all that hard work I mentioned before.....You've maxed out your characters attributes offline to 11 and hooked him/her up with some sweet threads (your choice) and hot accessories, now go represent your bad ass self online baby. This is the real payoff in my mind, being able to play others with your own unique character in all the levels that are available to you offline from Freestyle comps like slopestyle and half pipe, to racing anything from the "Throne" to "Happiness". I only have a few gripes with the online setup, first, after completing a challenge you can't simply play again, you have to back out to the lobby and send that person another challege. Second, why bother letting the 56Kers play? They lag soooooo bad it's impossible for a BB or DSL player to win! Third, why only 2 per challenge? I understand the half pipe but why on a race on such a BIG mountain?OK those are my gripes, here's my kudos for what was included in the on line game, the buddy list (now featured in SOCOM2) this handy dandy tool lets you find your snow buddy anywhere in the game. It will tell you if your friend is offline, challenging someone, or in a specific lobby, and the use of the mic. Nice to see support for a "cool" peripheral! Talking trash never looked so good!

10/10 offline and 9/10 online

Game Review: Downhill Domination

Are you equiped for the challenge? Incog Inc. brings the yet another extreme sports title to the PS2, but this isn't another Tony Hawk, Dave Mirra, Kelly Slater clone, welcome to Xtreme mountain biking! Awesome dude :lol: Incog has now churned out 3 top quality games all completely different from each other all gems in their own right. As with all Incog titles you have a wide array of characters to choose from, my fav is T-Bag!Multiple pick-ups on your race down,energy boost/combat upgrade/adrenaline boost/ X-tra points, and plenty of bonuses, from cool videos, real pro mountain bikers to unlock, to better bike accessories and real life sponsors like SoBe/ O'NEAL/ebay/Oakley/snapple!First impression I had when I played was, "wow this is SSX on mountain bikes" then I started tooling with the weapons and thought "cool, SSX + Road Rash" then after earned some dead presidents I brought my ride to the shop and thought, " oooh upgrades, SSX+Road Rash with a dash of Gran Turismo". DD's tracks are looooooooooooong, like 4 times longer than SSX! One track, Mt. Konawaki takes you from the summit over and thru an observatory, thru a volcano, alone the edge of a 500 foot cliff and down to the beach below. DD's tracks are exactly what I wanna see in SSX3 (but with snow) You have so many spliting and intersecting routes to choose from that you trully feel like you're in control of where you go and you're not stuck on a predetermined path. When you're riding down these trails at breakneck speed you can see the amount of detail Incog put into each level from the vegitation to the hikers and wild life which you can run over and be attacked by! (watch those bears). It's also here where my biggest problem with this game lies, there are more than enough opportunities to catch BIG air but alot of times you'll find yourself plummeting into oblivion because what you though was a jump.....wasn't :( The music selection is typical extreme sports genre tunes, nothing special but not as bad as some games. The character voice over's are above average, but still steriotypical....dude. DD has weeks of replay value with the pleathora of additional games modes like career, specailized career, freeride, freestyle, moshbowl, arcade, versus. Completing each of these modes and earning cash will help you in unlocking the Xcellent bonus's, secret stuff.Overall DD is a solid, clean, well designed addition to the flooded genre of Xtreme games from the folks who introduced us to car combat all those years ago. The major flaws with the game are really minimal, awkward control scheme with no option to rearrange the controller, and some abyss's of doom that intially appear to be opportunities for BIG air.

7/10

Game Review: SSX

SSX, my first game for the PS2, SSX isn't just another "extreme" snowboarding game. It is THE extreme snowboarding game that all others will try and follow. The game is from EA sports BIG and it lives up to that name, bigger characters, bigger venues, bigger air. SSX takes an extreme sport and injects it with enough adrenaline for a cow!

The intro alone got me psyched to play the game, it had a banging song from Mix Master Mike that set the mood of the game.

The soundtrack for the entire game is good enough to listen to without the game. Another aspect of SSX is the announcer, with some wise ass comments when you wipe hard is just another way the player is drawn into the the game.

The cast of characters are a refreshing jolt to the genre, each character has their own personality and are overflowing with enthusiasm. Like the cast of Street Fighter II the cast of SSX spanns the world, Mac and Zoe represent the US, Elise is the boisterous blond bombshell from Canada, Moby "Mr" Jones rides for her majesty, Kaori and Hiro have the honor of representing Japan, Jurgen carves the powder for Germany, and JP performs for France.

SSX offers up multiple events, Warmup, Freeride, Race, and Showoff. Choose a character and play as them with their preset stats or enter the World Circuit and compete against the other 7 around the world. By winning races you earn experience points that can be used to boost the stats of your character, the for stats are speed, stability, edging and tricks. As you boost these stats your rank rises from newbie to superstar.

SSX offers up the most extreme venues in a snowboard game, they're BIG! Each venue has it's own intro song and represents one of the 8 characters. The first venue SSX throws at you is Snow Dream which is located in Japan and is home to spunky Kaori. Next is Elysium Alps in Europe, then my favorite Merqury City Melt down on the west coat which has the player carving powder thru a metropolitan winter wonderland. From there we travel to the South West to Mesablanca where the race will have you flying thru a mine shaft ala Indiana Jones! Think that was extreme? Test your skills on the Aloha Ice Jam venue, you'll be racing on a giant iceberg being towed to a tropical port! Now that's EXTREME! Pipe Dream is the final stop in the competition and the name of the game here is rail slides, the whole venue is underground and offers up never ending rails to grind some even do loops! Your reward for winning the SSX competion is the hidden venue named Untracked. The name says it all, the course is simply amazing,a mountain that you can go where ever however you like...the ultimate freeride!

This game is abosolutely beautiful and really showcases what the PS2 is capable of! For a first generation title SSX shines BIGGER and brighter with amazing lighting and snow effects, the movements is smooth and the controls are intuitive and become second nature after a few rides. The sound is great, cool music, fun announcer, and the voice acting for each character gives them individuality.

9/10