There has not been a shortage of trailers, developer diaries or screenshots for
SSX since the game's announcement and that deluge looks set to continue. To start off today's article, we bring you the second part of the
Online Features developer diary. Todd Batty, creative director for
SSX, talks gamers through global events and geotags:
For those of you who can't watch the trailer, global events are constant ongoing online tournaments at every location in the game. Players can drop-in and drop-out at any time, though you may want to set a high score or fast time before you leave! Each event has a different cost to join; there are free events at one end of the scale or events that can cost a million in-game credits at the other. The more riders who take part in each event, the higher the prize pot becomes. How many credits you earn depends on how well you place in the leaderboard at the end of the event. Players can also create their own custom events.
Geo tags are user generated collectibles. Geotags can be earned throughout the game or be bought for a small amount of credits in the in-game store. Players then place those tags anywhere in the
SSX world for other players to try and collect. Each tag starts earning credits as soon as it is placed; the longer that it takes another player to collect your tag, the more credits that you earn.
Two of the locations that are featured in the game are Antarctica and Patagonia, both of which have received their own 'Own The Planet' trailers. We begin with Patagonia:
Next stop for us - Patagonia! Our target descent here is the north face of Fitz Roy, and at thirty-three-hundred and seventy-five meters it's one of the steepest faces in the world!
It's a crazy labyrinth of wicked rock spires, twisting canyons and knife-edge ridge-runs that'll rotate your stomach! Oh, there are a few unexpected surprises as well.
Because with breaks and gaps the size of football fields out there, no line is "the easy way" down!
As promised, we have Antarctica to follow:
No snowboard trip around the world would be complete without a stop in Antarctica. It's the coldest and most desolate place on earth; a frozen white desert where sunlight is everything's best friend.
This place is a maze of paths and it's littered with ice tunnels and crevasses just waiting to swallow you up.The frozen and forgotten ships and abandoned weather stations should remind you of that as you make your way through this region towards the prize of Mount Slaughter.
To continue the onslaught, we realised that we hadn't covered the 'Uber Mondays' trailer for this week. In previous weeks we've seen the signature moves for
Eddie Wachowski,
Zoe Payne and
Mac Fraser. This time it is the turn of Kaori Nishidake and her Pirouette Air Grind.
As the final trailer of the day, we bring to you the TV spot that may become very familiar over the next few weeks. This 40 second advert made its debut at the X-Games and will be broadcasting across regional stations now.
That's enough of the trailers for today. For my next trick I'll be showing you three new screenshots to be released:
Kaori
Mac
Tane
In news that is likely to please
SSX fans, the game will not require an online pass for players to play online with their friends. However, as with all of EA Sports' games released since 2010, the game will include a one-time use registration code online pass of sorts, so how will this work? In a statement issued to
Game Informer, an EA spokesperson confirmed the details for you:
In SSX, players without an Online Pass are able to compete and play in both of SSX's online game modes, Explore and Global Events with no restrictions. In Global Events, the top finishers from each event are awarded with in-game credits. These in-game credits earned during play will not be awarded to the player if they do not have an Online Pass; these credits will be stored so that at any time, if a player redeems an Online Pass code, all the credits that they had previously earned in Global Events will be immediately awarded to them.
Economy balance makes it possible to unlock all available content and allows you to participate in all event drops across both Explore and Global Events, with credits earned solely in Explore.SSX is due to be released on February 28th in North America and March 2nd in Europe. An exact date is to be confirmed for Australasia. Details on the US pre-order bonuses can be found
here if you're interested.