(I'm dusting off this old forum account. Hi.)
So I was at E3 today, and it took me an hour and half of waiting in line, but I got to play SSX!
Plus I didn't have to sign any non-disclosure agreement or anything, so as far as I know what I learned is fair-game to discuss. Figured I'd pop in and tell you all about it.
Edit: aaaaall about it. This is a long post!
They had the game behind closed doors and they gave 30 minute previews. In the first 15 minutes one of the devs talked about the design of the game (Race it, trick it, survive it, etc) and played the game in front of us. The menu is the google-earth inspired interface they talked about it, and it's
really slick. Select a mountain range, it zooms into a perspective view on it and you're looking at a couple mountains to select from. They zoomed in on the Himalayas, Africa, and Alaska. Each one had 2-3 mountains. Needless to say, the game looks pretty damn big.
The dude played the 3 tracks you've all seen in the videos, and it was nice to see a different play-through of each of them. The race and trick run were neat, but I gleaned the most insight from him playing the deadly-descent. In that run the camera smoothly transitioned from regular view to the backward-facing camera once he glided off the ridge with the squirrel-suit (still not totally sold on the angle, but hey at least it was smooth). The very next thing that was apparent from him playing was that it's
hard. The guy had a tough time getting down it, and apparently in all his demos to people that day he hadn't been able to survive (he died at about 670 meters for us). It also didn't look like he was faking it, so I think it's very interesting that the difficulty is legitimately high.
More importantly, he also stressed the fact that these descents are meant to be stand-alone set-piece moments in the game. He likened them to when you get chopper-gunner segments in Call of Duty. He said they're there to act as a foil to the rest of the game and change the pace. The point being, things like the rear-facing camera aren't
really part of the core experience - that fact that it's so different from what we're used to is the point. Based on what he said, I was actually pretty sold on the concept of the deadly-descents.
After that they ushered us into another room with a bunch of TVs to play the Himalayas trick level for a good 10-15 minutes. I happened to be at a station next to another one of the devs (who I unfortunately forget the name of, but he said he was a gamemode/online play designer), and I was half playing the game, half talking to him. This was good and bad. I gleaned more info, but I didn't get as much of a chance to analyze the game first-hand. But here's what I thought of it:
It's an early-buildThe first thing I noticed is that they actually aren't lying when they say "pre-alpha." Plenty of games at E3 are called "pre-alpha," but are really more of a beta build. The SSX I was playing was missing lots of features, and hadn't been polished yet (and that's not a bad thing - I actually think it's very cool they let us play it this early in development). I wouldn't be surprised if the 3 levels they showed look completely different in the final game (especially since they appeared to be sharing lots of textures). Also, going into it I was concerned about whether the characters were going to be talking and yelling at each other, and have that great personality from Tricky and 3. But the game really isn't in the state where they would be concentrating on that stuff yet. So perhaps some of you can rest more at-ease about that.
The general feelNevertheless, I was having fun. The game feels like SSX but... more weighty I guess? It felt like the characters preserved their momentum, so if I screwed up my aim on one jump, correcting myself upon landing to hit the next one perfectly was tricky. And I mean that in a good way. Other than that, it's hard to talk more about the feel of the game, because again it was unfinished and will probably change a fair amount come-release. But I will say I've played the fuck out of SSX3, and I could kind of pick up this game, but I was making pretty bad runs. So at the very least we should all have the experience of re-learning how to master an SSX game.
The controlsThe devs have been hesitant to talk about the controls, and the guy I was talking to told me they're not finished (especially with the tricks). I was playing on PS3, and the D-pad was all-but not used. The L stick was used for both turning and winding-up spins/flips. It's not clear whether that's how the final game will be, but I told the guy I missed having them separated. Although, it wasn't bad like Shaun White or Amped where in order to do backflips you have to slow down
. It was like the turning controls disappeared when you held down jump, and were replaced with the winding controls.
That brings me to the jumping. There are two ways to jump. #1 is hold down X like usual. #2 is R stick held down, then flipped up like in Skate. I switched between the two and couldn't decide which one I liked better (really). Both methods were very function and felt just fine. Don't worry, there's no need to get all worried about "oh god they're turning into Skate," because they're totally not.
The in-air trick controls were the part I didn't really get. I was telling the guy that I was an SSX3 player and asking "how do I do this, do that, can I tweak, how do I do an uber", and he didn't want to give me solid answers because the trick-system is still being worked on. However, the way it played was the R stick up/down/left/right corresponded to grabbing the top/bottom/left/right of the board. The odd thing is the face buttons did the same thing. There was no "hold triangle to do an indie" - the buttons still corresponded to different sides of the board. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to try every button combo to see what would happen (obviously, you can hold 4 buttons at once but only 1 direction on a stick), but they really seemed to function the same as the stick. I then asked "oh so is it like Skate where I can diagonally move the stick and stuff and I do different grabs?" He said it would be but they're still making it
. He very-much made it sound like the trick system is in flux right now. I was sort of doing ubers out of nowhere without knowing what I was doing, and I wasn't sure how do to different grabs and tweaks, but it was whatever. I'm not sweating it, because the guy was right there saying it wasn't finished, and I believed him, so no harm no foul. I'm sure when they do nail-down the trick system it'll feel 10x better than what I played. And I was playing something that was about as fun as Shawn White's trick stick, so take that for what it's worth.
The TrackOne thing I've been curious about is whether the mountains are open world, or series of enclosed tracks. So naturally I restarted, turned right, and boarded off the track. I went about 30 yards over what was obviously not supposed to be seen, then reached where the geometry ended and only skybox remained. So that answers that question I guess! The guy then told me that, indeed, it was not an open world game. Their eventual aim, he said, is to make natural barriers that look legit, and that players wouldn't really want to go over anyways. So it seems they're using the topography data as a foundation for all their levels, but that they are that:
levels. Earlier on in the presentation the person talking noted that "raw topography data makes awful levels", which makes sense. Personally, I'm really glad they're going in this direction. Plus, both the trick and race tracks definitely had paths continuing on below, making it seem that you can probably board from peak to base seamlessly on these mountains. And who knows if each mountain will have multiple tracks that take you to the bottom (a la On Tour)? I can't say, but I wouldn't rule it out.
Other than that, the Himalayas track was pretty cool. It was very wide with lots of paths and ways to trick off things. It was a fun little showoff stage.
Loadouts? (Question Mark?)I tried quitting out of the event to start it from the menu (ha-HAH, I am sneaky) to get a closer look at the character-select screen that they briefly showed in the first part of the presentation, but didn't want to talk about. You select a character, board, and 2 (or was it 3?) other options. The guy told me I wasn't supposed to see it, so I only got the slightest of peeks, but it's pretty interesting stuff. It appears things like the squirrel-suit are 1 of many tools to choose from. I also noticed that "boost" was something selected in another slot. Perhaps the boost button can be set up to do other functions? I don't know, maybe. Plus, at the very bottom is a dialogue that says "chance of success: ___". This makes me think that you can loadout your character however the hell you want, regardless of the event. That wing-suit jump at the start of the deadly-descent? Maybe you don't have to do it if you don't want! Who knows! Speculation!
The Uber-trick shockwave thingYeah, it's sort of weird, but not as bad as it looked in the videos. Interesting to note: they are not exclusive to the trick mode. The guy I was talking to said that they will also factor into races, perhaps letting tricking give you the ability to knock riders away from you upon landing. He was sort of hand-wavy about it, because apparently it's another feature they're still playing around with.
However, I got
one chance at this thing to give him a little bit of feedback, and I spent it on this feature. I told him that whatever they have this shockwave do, I don't think it should slow your character down. I likened it to slow-mo uber tricks in On Tour. I explained that I thought the slow-mo in that killed your flow in-game, and that the slowing-effect of the shockwave was analogous to it. He kind of nodded and was like "alright, that's some good feedback". Not sure if anything will come of it, but hey, I said something regardless.
The GraphicsThe game looked surprisingly good playing it first-hand. You don't need to worry about the level of detail on the characters - they looked great. And overall the visuals the game is throwing on the screen are pleasing to the eye, just exaggerated enough to look like SSX, and all-around pretty impressive. The game ran very smooth, as well. Of course, when I stopped moving and really took a close look it started to look kind of underwelming (you've all seen the screenshots and videos of the 3 tracks). Not to mention, that avalanche-snow in the deadly-descent was a very cheesy-looking particle effect. However, given the state the game is in right now, it's probably par for the course. Given that the trick-system isn't even finished, I'm surprised they've completed this big an art-pass at all.
tl;dr, Here's what I found out:-There are a lot of fucking mountains in this game.
-The menu is great.
-Mountains are
not open sandboxes. Topographic data is (presumably) being used as the foundation for enclosed levels and the 3D skyboxes. They'll probably make it so there's no need for an "Out of Bounds" reset thing, but the tracks do have boundaries. I think this is a good move on their part.
-The boarding feels more weighty than past games, like the characters preserve momentum (no spinning on a dime just by holding left or right).
-The trick-system and controls are yet to be nailed down.
-You can use either the R stick or X/A button to jump.
-Steering and winding spins/flips is (for now) all on the L stick.
-You select loadouts for each event, which has at least enough flexibility to require a "chance of success" metric.
-I had fun playing it.
-The game is still early in production. Keep requesting features and giving feedback, because the game can and will change!
Last edited by
Dr. Spud on Wed Jun 08, 2011 11:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.