SSX Blur Update

As EA's Montreal-developed SSX Blur speeds toward release next week, we had a chance to dig in to the game to get a deeper look at the title. The game was announced late last year and offers a decidedly new way to play the latest entry in the long-running series. To date, we had the chance to try out only a brief demo of the game that let us zip around one course. Fortunately, with the game's release so close, we've at last checked out a near-final version of the game to see how it has come together and see whether the SSX/Wii marriage is looking like a happy one.

You'll find a few modes to play around with in Blur: a tutorial, multiplayer, career, and quickplay. The tutorial is a comprehensive rundown of the game's control scheme that goes over every aspect of using the Wii Remote and Nunchuk in several focused sequences where you'll get comfortable with the interactive control scheme. The multiplayer mode is your basic two-player split-screen simultaneous play and turn-based racing for up to four players. The career mode is shaping up to offer exactly what you'd expect out of an SSX game. After creating a profile you'll be dropped on the slopes of a mountain and can do some exploring to find events, gather collectibles, or just get comfortable with the control mechanics. As with the last two SSX games, Blur has an open feel to it and makes going around the mountain an interactive menu of sorts. When you start to progress through the game and open up new racers (you have just a handful to choose from in the beginning), you'll start competing in the various tournaments in the game. Victory in the tournaments lets you unlock content that includes racers and performance- and appearance-enhancing accessories for your rider that range from outfits to boards. Once you get on a roll, you'll be able to start traveling between the three different peaks in the game that house the roughly dozen courses. Finally, the quickplay mode lets you jump directly into the various race types for a fast arcade-style run.

In terms of the game's control, the positive first impression we had with our demo extended into our time with the near-final game. The basic system of getting around with the Wii Remote feels good. Moving your racer with the Nunchuk, via tilting, flicking, and pressing the analog stick, still works well. You'll be able to perform a bit of customization on the setup, as you can choose to tweak how much you'll have to use the analog stick in conjunction with tilting the Nunchuk for turns in the game's options. Using the buttons on the Nunchuk for boosting and stance changes provides a good complement to the movement mechanic that keeps the action intuitive. The Wii Remote's function as your in-the-air input device seems to work almost as well. The basic suite of motions you can do--moving it left or right for spins, or moving it up or down for flips--feel right. Throwing snowballs with B to rattle your opponents and hitting A and B to do handplants all make good sense. Using the remote in conjunction with the A button for the ubertricks is a somewhat trickier affair that the jury is still out on. Though we dig the idea behind it, in practice, the act of drawing motions in the air during a jump can get complicated. While it's not so bad with the easier shapes that have to be made, some of the more complex motions are difficult to pull off accurately. We'll have to spend more time with the game to see if it's just a steep learning curve or if the system doesn't work as well as we'd hoped. Despite that one element, though, SSX Blur's control scheme feels good overall.

The visuals in the game have been cleaned up since the work-in-progress demo we saw a while back. As we noted before, the franchise's stylized look suits the Wii nicely, and that impression hasn't changed. The racers we saw all looked good and had a good amount of modest detail, such as Karoi's panda backpack and bits of clothing moving in the wind. Extra flourishes like snow sticking to the characters when they tumbled, motion blur, particle effects for snow, mist, and fireworks, and copious amounts of lens flare and other lighting all help enhance the game's look. The courses seen in previous games should be familiar to longtime fans; they aren't dramatically different overall . From what we saw, there's some slight tweaking here and there but nothing too out of the ordinary. Despite the added polish since we last saw it, the game's frame rate remains high and consistent, ensuring a good sense of speed.

SSX's Blur's audio package stays true to the model set by the previous games, with some enhancement. The center of the experience is the radio station framework that features commentary from a DJ and cycles the different tunes you'll hear as you play. Given the love/hate relationship most players have with the DJ, we'll note that you can turn his voice all the way down in the game's options, allowing you to enjoy your experience with just music. The game's varied soundtrack will cycle in and out as you play, ebbing and flowing in conjunction with how you're doing. Aside from the DJ, the voices vary some; the racers don't seem quite as chatty as they've been in previous games, though you'll still hear everyone to one degree or another as you race. Finally, the game features the expected collection of sound effects for pickups and the like.

Based on what we played, SSX Blur looks like a solid first date for the SSX series and the Wii. The control scheme has a good feel and seems to be a good fit. The visuals are good and feature the additions of some nice bits of gloss to keep the game from looking too GameCubey. As far as content goes, there's a good amount of material to mine through with this "greatest hits" feel of returning courses, and characters may leave fans of the series hungering for more original content. Thankfully, solid gameplay mechanics uphold the game's considerable charm. Wii owners looking for some snowy action will want to keep an eye out for SSX Blur when it ships next week exclusively for the Wii. Look for our full review shortly.