Snowboarders catch air, tuck and get tricky in ‘SSX’

People tell me I have the best job in the world, reviewing video games, because I do. But some days are a drag. No, I'm not looking for sympathy.

The other morning, I looked at a stack of new games. That sounds amazing, doesn't it? A stack of games!

I decided to test the best-seller "Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City." But it was so blah, it nearly ruined my day.

In this third-person shooter, I portrayed a soldier working for the evil Umbrella Corporation, which unleashed zombies upon the world. Interesting premise.

I traveled a dull, predestined path, shooting zombies and presumably good guy government agents who were in my way -- while I covered Umbrella's nefarious butt.

The shooting felt dumb and dinky. Some of the boss monsters made me yawn. Bored.

So then I tried playing the survival-horror game "Silent Hill: Downpour." I portrayed a convict trapped in Silent Hill, the creepy ghost-monster town coated in mist and fog.

At first, I enjoyed the pace of "Silent Hill." I walked through the mostly deserted town, looking for makeshift weapons (a wrench, a frying pan).

Some moments outright startled me, because the mise-en-scene would be effectively spooky and hushed, when suddenly a villain made noise on my tail (hello, wrench and/or gun).

But I had to solve silly puzzles, such as: A) find a knob on one side of a huge room, then turn it; B) then quickly run to another side of the room to turn another knob; C) then run to some entryway that these knobs have briefly unloosed.

There seemed to be something kind of rote and dreary about these puzzles, and the pacing eventually felt like molasses to me. Frankly, I wasn't in the mood.

So I quit "Silent Hill" and moved onto "SSX," a reboot of the "SSX" snowboarding franchise. This is the sleekest, fastest and most intuitive snowboarder I've played. It suffers only from being an overly familiar genre.

"SSX" has fun courses. Winning turns hard within an hour. But it's easy to get a feel for how to move quickly, jump tree stumps, and make huge air jumps while twisting tricks in the wind. I love the dual-thumbstick controls. Plus, it just looks cool.

Electronic Arts crafted 27 mountains (with caves, paths and rails) by fictionalizing peaks cribbed from NASA's geotagging of the Alps, the Himalayas and other real locales in Japan, Canada and elsewhere.

"SSX" somewhat reminds me of the old car-combat series "Burnout" in its visual presentations and its method of unlocking courses (but without "Burnout's" rockets and guns).

So that was my fun/frustrating week with video games. I won't give star ratings to "Silent Hill" and "Resident Evil," because they were so unappealing, I quit them after only several hours.

But I rented "SSX" for $2, and it was worth every penny and then some.

("SSX" by Electronic Arts retails for $60 for Xbox 360 and PS 3 -- Plays fun. Looks very good. Starts easy, becomes very challenging. It's rated "E" for mild lyrics and mild violence. Three out of four stars.)

Contact Doug Elfman at
delfman@reviewjournal.com.
He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman.