SSX keeps it's thrilling snowboarding as good as it ever has been with On Tour.
The obvious change is the art; the game has gone totally punk now, drawings and random things flood you most of the time and it's good but add that to the punk rock soundtrack, you might not like it. But, is you own an Xbox you can copy your music from your hard drive to the playlist, whether your into hip-hop or country, and you hate punk rock and your without and Xbox, the only options are to put up with it, or switch music off and turn on radio.
Aside from the big change in presentation and audio, this is still SSX and this is still a great game of snowboarding, also skiing. Yes, the third new additon from art and audio is a new way to experiance SSX, with any boarder you pick, you can choose between skis and boards, both are great to use and some people will just want to stick to boards or both. The tricks are just as they ever have been, hit any of the shoulder buttons to pull of tricks, hold more than one such as R1 and R2, you do another trick, just experimant and learn with it. Newcomers might need to get the hang of it that is if they've shifted from Tony Hawks where you use O button to pull of tricks with the D-Pad; SSX veterans will be fine with this. But! It's not just the shoulder buttons that you use, remember Uber Tricks? Well, instead of pressing a combination to pull them off, you use the R3 button, twiddle it around abit providing you have yellow boost (we'll get to that later) and the screen goes to slo-mo and you then pull of some ridiculously insane move like throwing the board aroudn your neck in a 1080 degrees cycle. Things like that, hit it again though anf you pull of Monster Tricks, this is the rider's signature move and if you pull it off without rolling into a snowball, you get big points and boost.
Boost you say? That's right, just like last time, pull off tricks, get boost, boost is hit with the SQUARE button, and you really get the games sense of speed and it's a beuatiful thing to watch. Boost comes in three colours, GREEN, YELLOW and RED. Green is the boost you first get, you get that to it's capacity and it turns Yellow, now you can pull of Uber tricks, land those and other moves to get the yellow boosting up to Red, now Monster tricks are yours and start laying them down for some heavy doses of both points and boost. Boost is best used on races, where you should refrain from big moves all the time and more time spent on boosting. But, what do i do if i'm racing and tricks slow me down, how do i get boost then? Good question, use the R3 button and pull it down or upwards to manual, basically your still going but your leaning on your board or skis whilst getting boost, might not be much boost but start grinding on rails and barriers to go faster and earn boost then land a few tricks on the jumps and boost.
The Tour? Just like SSX 3, On Tour once again takes place on one mountain, not Metro City or Snow Dream, it's just one big mountain ready for shredding. For the actual Tour, your just taking races and other little things to get Hype and increase your rank on the charts. This time you play as a created character and you rise him or her through the ranks and purchase clothing and fashion for your character and you buy his or her's attributes and moves with baords or skis. In no time, you'll be a number one boarder.
At the end, On Tour keeps the games high-octane style of snowboarding, or skiing this time, it might be alot less on Pyrotheciness, but it is still a satisfying and a truly visceral and unique experiance of what EA BIG can do.