Great Control and Music; Bad Framerate and Menus
posted by conman (SOUTH BEND, IN) Mar 10, 2007
Member since Aug 2006
Too many people expect this game to be easy right off the bat. It isn't, nor should it be. The controls take some time to get used to (definitely spend time with the tutorial), but once you get them down, you'll start racking up points easily.
But the music is the heart of this game. Not only is it good music, but it also adds to the gameplay itself. As your Groove meter increases, the music itself subtly and dynamically builds a deeper "groove." I love it.
Also, when this game is running at its best, it looks absolutely gorgeous. Unfotunately, many, many times in the game, I ran into serious framerate hitches. Often they interfere with gameplay, and they're always annoying. The graphics aren't that much better than what's possible on Gamecube (which is fine), but I don't understand then why there should be framerate issues on a (slightly) faster machine.
The menu system also sucks. It looks great and flows smoothly from menu to menu, but there're way too many menus to get through and way too many load screens between them. Getting from one event to another used to be fun and easy, but now it's a big ordeal.
Even worse, the menu buttons are arranged very poorly. Sometimes "continue" is on the left, and other times it's on the right; this means that if you're not paying careful attention, you'll hit "give up" in the middle of a tournament when you meant to hit "continue." That's a terrible design flaw.
Overall, I'm sure I'll be putting in many more hours into the game despite these shortcomings. The gameplay is brilliant and the Wii controls are a perfect fit. I hope the next Wii SSX improves upon the bad points I've mentioned. Highly recommended to fans of the series and for those looking for a challenging, technical use of the Wii remote (like Trauma Center).
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