SSX Out of Bounds

N-Gage has become a console of PS2 ports. It sounds like a bad thing, and I suppose it would be if I had expected the console to be filled with original content. Nokia is new to the market though, and when a newbie arrives game developers don't want to take too many chances. They'll port over their best titles, but continue to design the exclusive content (which later turns out to be semi-exclusive) for the consoles that have established success.

It seems like every other week there's another new port to review, one that sucks me in just as deeply as the console version, taking away more hours of valuable sleep that I wouldn't have gotten anyway. This week's candidate for sleep deprivation: SSX Out of Bounds. It has polygons, not sprites; it's played from a third-person perspective; and the gameplay is as close to a true snowboarding game as you're going to get until EA develops SSX for the PSP.

Filled with obstacle-littered courses and trick-heavy characters, Out of Bounds goes out of its way to give the player that extreme sports feeling. You know, the feeling that makes you say, "I haven't moved a muscle, yet I'm starting to perspire."

Ramps, rails, and steep hills are very common this game, giving the player plenty of opportunities to show off his/her sickest tricks. Tricks are performed in the SSX tradition. All it takes is a shift in where you're throwing your body weight and a single button tap to execute a trick. Do this quick enough and you'll see that there's still time left before you land. Make yourself useful by dishing out another trick, hopefully one that differs from the first. (Performing the same trick multiple times in a row diminishes that trick's value. It's unavoidable over time, but there are plenty of moves and combo combinations for you to keep the point title high.)

Continue doing this and you'll rack up major point totals. Your opponents will do the same, and they'll always appear to have a much easier time accomplishing the most difficult of tasks (they are controlled by the computer, after all). It's a race though, so the most important thing is that you cross the finish line first. (Except in the trick modes, where the most important thing is getting the highest score.)

During a race, Out of Bounds encourages the execution of tricks with a boost meter. If you're scoring big points with all the combos you've been doing, you've been scoring boost energy as well. The gist of what it does for you is self-explanatory. Besides giving you an edge in the race, it also increases the height and distance achieved when jumping off a ramp.

Unlike most of the recent N-Gage releases, SSX Out of Bounds does not include an online multiplayer mode. Gamers can N-Gage themselves in a four-player game via Bluetooth, but that's only if you can find three people who have an N-Gage and this game. I think it might actually be easier to find a needle in a haystack.

Of course, no one can resist the temptation to slap the N-Gage Arena logo on the front of their game. Thus, Out of Bounds includes Shadow Racing. Shadow Racing lets you take on a ghost-like version of a real-life opponent. They're not really racing you; you're merely competing with their high score. The game simply places a transparent model of your opponent's character in your game to give you the illusion that you're actually competing.

Briefly entertaining when Tony Hawk launched with the console, Shadow Racing is no longer an intriguing feature.

The small character models and tiny animations make it difficult to discern what the character is doing at all times, taking away some of the game's life force. I'm not thrilled with the button layout, though it is acceptable. It's the lack of analog control has a much more negative impact than the rest of the game's flaws.

These are the reasons why I can't recommend SSX Out of Bounds as a must-buy N-Gage game. Unfortunately that means that most of you will never play it. You can't just walk into your local rentailer (the industry term for rental shop) and rent the latest N-Gage releases. You can't even buy them in all stores! Because it is a decent game (and the best snowboarder of its kind), I suggest you wait a few months and see if the price drops. I'd buy it at $15, maybe even $20. $30 is pushing it though, especially when there are superior N-Gage games (though not N-Gage snowboarding games) retailing for less.

Gameplay: 7.3
Fairly smooth, moderately fast, and in true 3D. The days of 2D N-Gage games are long gone now that developers have what it takes to make 'em comparable to what you're playing on a home console.

SSX Out of Bounds has its share of entertainment to give and its share of flaws to disappoint with. It makes me wish I had the tools (and the skills) to tweak every detail and make the game what it should be. As it is, we're left with a better-than-the-competition experience. Worth playing, but not necessarily worth buying.

Graphics: 6.9
Packed with polygons and in full-3D, but overall it looks like a PSone game gone bad. The edges are jagged; the characters are really small and hard to see; the backgrounds aren't at all eye-popping, etc.

Sound: 5.0
Ringtone-sounding vocals for the introductory track – the rest are typical, N-Gage-style techno beats. They could literally trademark this style of music as Nuzak.

Difficulty: Medium
Somewhat challenging, somewhat not. More frustrating than anything else.

Concept: 6.9
SSX for N-Gage. Most of what’s good about the series is here, just not in its best form.

Multiplayer: 5.0
Up to four players via Bluetooth, but no true online multiplayer is present, killing your chances of ever experiencing a four-player race.

Overall: 7.0
SSX Out of Bounds is the kind of game you would have expected to see during a Showcase of Future Technology in the early 90s. It represents a teeny, tiny amount of the technology available to game developers, even those working solely on the N-Gage.

Graphically it's no prize, and in this case it really hinders the gameplay. How can I land a long combo of stunts if I can't tell exactly which position my boarder is in? The N-Gage screen is just too tiny for this. Or maybe the game tries to cram too much background beauty into a world where the athletes should be the focus. Either way it's a pain.

If you can ignore it, or manage to get used to the poor animations and avoid too many bad landings, Out of Bounds is an enjoyable game. Where else can you launch yourself into the air, spin, twist and turn, glide into a hill, and immediately fly through the air again by climbing the next ramp? The environments are deep considering the platform they were designed for, with only one game that's superior (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater).