SSX E3 2005 Hands-On Report

Gizmondo well-wishers everywhere should be relieved that Electronic Arts has decided to start porting games to the new handheld. The support of the world's largest games publisher will go a long ways toward establishing the platform's legitimacy, especially if it can consistently bring its games over at the level of quality we discerned in SSX for the Gizmondo. Everyone's favorite snowboarding series is looking fantastic on the Gizmondo, so if EA can capitalize on its success here, it will set a very encouraging precedent for the new device.

Few details on SSX were available on the show floor, but we were very impressed with what little we saw. For one thing, the game's graphical fidelity was astounding. It wasn't quite on par with the latest console SSX games, but it looked only slightly worse than the best we've seen from the PSP so far. We're not lying when we say that Gizmondo SSX offered a console-like experience in a handheld format, right down to the familiar tunes and sound effects. It was unclear whether the entirety of EA Big's soundtrack had made it into the version we played, but even if some of it will eventually be cut out for space considerations, there's enough there to rock out to. The controls were quite responsive, too. We enjoyed a quick run down a track we recognized from SSX 3 while playing as Moby, exploiting the same terrain features and power-ups we memorized playing the console version.

The Gizmondo team still seems to be in the process of deciding which features and levels will make it in to the final version of the game, but it could definitively say that Gizmondo SSX will eventually have a multiplayer mode of some kind. We'll be sure to keep you updated on this promising game's development as the clock counts down toward its fall launch window.