It's an exercise in tedium and frustration, which is unlike anything in the series before it. Too much trial and error.
Well, throw away all of that. While you still pull off superhuman tricks on your board this time around, now you have to watch where you do it. Racing times are now a frustrating endeavor to undertake because of the damn pits of death or the course anomaly that slows you down (sometimes completely), and there's nothing wacky and interesting about either the courses or the characters. There's an overbearing layer of mind-numbing trial & error and sheer frustration that mostly undermines the elements that made this series so great.
Don't get me wrong, the courses are still neat on their own merits. They're mapped from actual mountains and touched up by the development team for added flavor. But I don't know who thought it was a good idea to throw in those god awful pits of death. Yeah, you read it right; pits. Of. Death. You fall in them, you have to restart. Sure, there's a new rewind feature to remedy your often accidental plunges into doom, but it's shoddy and is a total last-resort method to POSSIBLY put you back into the race while your competition is untouched by the time-travel. So really, you might as well start over each time you fly to oblivion.
There are three types of events: Trick It! Race It! And the new Survive It! The first is all about freestyle, tricking it out, a competition to see who gets the most points from combos and other point-dealing actions. It's easy enough considering the wealth of huge jumps, the crazy tricks you can pull off that none of the game's competitors could even HOPE to touch (yeah, laying on your snowboard whilst grinding at 100+ km/h, or pulling off a superman, are just two of the radical moves to pull off), and the ease of absolutely stacking up those points you earn. Also returning are Race It! events, which are purely about getting down to the end first, and tricking is strongly encouraged because it gauges your boost meter, which increases your speed for a period of time. This can pose a problem for the impatient gamer because many Race It! runs are tainted by the evil pits.
And then the guys decided to throw in something experimental in the form of Survive It! It's an interesting concept, but it's decidedly out of place in this series, which has been centered around unadulterated snowboarding fun. I understand that you'll have certain hazardous conditions that could hamper your progress in these courses (low-light conditions, flash freezing, avalanches, ice, etc.) and pits of death (sometimes for hundreds of meters leaving you little room for mistakes!), but they are far too frustrating in execution. What is worse, is that as mentioned, many of the Race It! runs are plagued with pits of death and other, often accidental (overlooked in the design phase) hazards as well, making them a chore rather than a straight-up fun time.
I'd be able to forgive the constant barrage of those AWFUL pits of death if the controls weren't so sensitive, and your turning wasn't so ineffective; but alas, I can't. Trick controls are fine and all, but I felt like you had to be careful about when and where to press some of the buttons. For example, if you hold the jump button, get some air, and for whatever reason you don't release it, you'll pull off a trick. It doesn't sound bad, but when you land before you realize that you're actually pulling off a tail-grab, you'll often wipe out, especially when you don't intend to jump in the first place. This is a problem in the classic control scheme and it can be rectified by switching to the new one (using the analog stick), but many people prefer the old to the new, and to have this happen to them sometimes inexplicably because of a design flaw, is probably a downer for some. It doesn't help that turning is a long and arduous process most of the time, until you're on ice in which you're going to have even more of a hell of a time contending with the difficult turning mechanic.
It's not all bad news, though; multiplayer is, while it has its good and bad traits, a worthy component of the package here. However, for anyone who is still not privy, behold a major disappointment; there is no offline, split-screen multiplayer to be had here. Hell, there's not even online, real-time competition either! Instead, it's centered around seeing who gets the better records, and nothing more. It's still a fine system, since you can still test your skills against real players. It's just unfortunate that you are playing against a recorded run, a record time/point from a friend or anonymous player rather than their actual spontaneous selves. Would have been great if we could sit on the couch with our friends, all with a controller at the ready, saying, "hey! Let's play a fun snowboarding game and see who gets the most points! We can play HORSE while we're at it!"
Many will remember that the characters from older installments were stand-out, interesting, and plain funny. They breathed extra life into each time you shredded the snow. David Arquette's line, "I can see my house from here!" might still resonate with fans of Tricky. But there's hardly anything left in these incarnations. They still utter something once in a while, but they're stale and barely noticeable because of the cacophony of sounds hitting you from all angles. Each time you go down a run, you are accompanied by a helicopter pilot who has the most lines in the game of any character combined, giving you hints about the path ahead or commending you for your efforts (or deriding you for your mishaps). That little bit doesn't help when you hit a kicker the wrong way and go careening off into a bottomless pit with the "TRY AGAIN" message popping up.
We never had to go through those before.
There are also hiccups in the very course designs themselves. It is most noticeable when there is an obstructive object that is hugging a cliff or other sheer vertical face. Numerous times now, I have made a jump off a kicker and landed right into the space between one said object and the cliff, stuck, and being forced purely because of bad course design to rewind, putting myself in a bad position because other riders are not affected by this action. You lose points, you lose time, you lose the chance to rectify a mistake you often have little control in avoiding; all when you use the rewind function. Sure, it helps in some cases, but it's almost always detrimental. Which compounds the frustration that smacks you in the face at almost all times.
Graphically, it's just what you need from a snowboarding game of present; it runs at a steady thirty frames-per-second, there are lots of neat particles and convincing snow effects, character design is pretty good and is perhaps the only way the characters stand out from each other, and lighting is solid. But you won't get graphical achievements here, to be honest.
Audio is good in almost every way. The soundtrack, while off-putting for some, is a redeeming quality for the game, with a varied but contemporary offering of electro-pop, dubstep, hip-hop, and other popular genres of music of the times. It's all quite upbeat, and that's what is necessary for this game (and to keep you from wanting to lug your controller at the screen). They're modified depending on your tricking performance. When you are in base Tricky! mode (the letters appear in ice-blue on your screen) the infamous Run DmC! track that is now synonymous with the series starts playing. When you pull off another insane combo, you may go into full-on Tricky! mode where the letters are glowing orange. The track at hand takes on a dub-step vibe. As you continue pumping out the big tricks, you keep this sequence going longer. Nothing wrong here.
Again, though, there's no lasting quality to the voice acting or characters, which was prevalent in older installments. Gone are the ways of wacky one-liners and stand-up comedy antics from your characters. They don't have any cartoon-like visual flare either, instead they look like colorful snowboarders from real life. Sure, they each have their own signature move, but that's about where the ball stops. It was odd that the developers chose to give the helicopter pilots the most personality of any character in the game, and you don't even see them or anything! Their purpose is to say things like, "stick to the right, unless you want a real challenge!" or "good one, Zoe!" In short, they serve the role of announcer in this game, but it would have been perhaps more desirable to have your playable characters say things to indicate some of your actions, such as big combos you execute, or catching some really big air. In-between important runs and the changing of mountains, cut-scenes that overview what is to come are narrated by an anonymous voice that won't bore you, but won't invigorate you either. Where's the fun factor, guys?
Did I touch on course design enough? I did already point out that, while they are neat because of how they were produced (satellite imagery with added developer touches, because no mountain anywhere has a ton of red pipes placed Willy-Nilly everywhere you look), they have flaws that need mentioning. First, they absolutely pale in comparison to previous games, because here they're too realistic in spite of the fantastical elements added to them.
Next up, they're hard to deal with sometimes, with the controls often being your enemy or because you happened to jump at the wrong time. But god, the worst thing for me, and for almost anyone who plays the courses that have them (good thing is, Tricky! courses almost never have them), has to be the pits of death. When the rewind feature is, as seemingly hastily-concocted as it is, the only way to keep the restart option from appearing on your screen, you did something wrong, EA. And when some courses have areas that are long stretches of narrow, often 45+ degree angles (think half-pipes, although there are few of those in this game) that are riddled with bumps and deceptive jumps, this becomes a problem. Big time.
To begin the end, I have to say I was highly disappointed with this game. Each time I play a run with the many pits of death to be encountered, I think, "these guys shouldn't make an SSX game ever again", and I stand by it even twenty-minutes after my last playthrough. It's been a few months since playing and I still remember getting absolutely frustrated on the final duel with Eddie. Whoever thought the pits were a good idea needs to go back to the drawing board and try again, preferably something completely different. They're not fun, they're just a detriment to what could have been a solid game. They're fine in a game like Jet Moto, since they're actually advertised in those games; but here, they slow you down or completely kill an otherwise blast of a game.
I sometimes felt like I was playing Jet Moto, only instead of high-speed hoverbikes in the helm, you get snowboards; instead of laps, you get one-time runs; but they both share those pits of death. If they scrapped that crap altogether, this would be a monumental title for current gamers to enjoy. And if they included more engagement and more fun, and if it took itself less seriously then it would be doubly more enjoyable. Also, this game is a false advertisement, because it really is just like Jet Moto (couldn't they have called it Jet Moto: Snowboarding Edition instead?) and not like the previous games.
As it stands, though, it's an exercise in tedium and frustration, which is unlike anything in the series before it. Too much trial and error, and too little sheer fun (think SSX Tricky and 3), makes Jack a dull boy.