Grab your oxygen tank and thermal underwear; videogame snowboarding just got dangerous.
The very first details about SSX: Deadly Descents have emerged, and it seems like the colorful and slightly crazy fun of the originals has well and truly been given the elbow, in favor of something darker, and a heck of a lot more serious.
Probably the biggest change is that the snowboarding experience actually has an element of danger to it. According to a summary on NeoGAF of an article about the game from this month’s EGM, each mountain will have a particular threat, which will include things like thin air, ice, and extreme cold. Your gear has taken on new dimension as well, because it will affect how well you handle the environmental challenges. Take the wrong item, and your run could be cut tragically short.
There will apparently be plenty to do though, as developer, EA Canada, is aiming to include 70 open, fully rideable mountains, split into 17 regions. The mountains themselves are procedurally generated, and will make use of topographical data from Google Earth. As well as exploring the mountains, there will also be courses and tracks to race on, which will have natural shortcuts to find.
Based on this description Deadly Descents sounds like it has some pretty interesting ideas, and could even be quite exciting to play. All the same, it seems like a pretty big change in direction for a series, which – up until now – hasn’t taken itself overly seriously.
Source: via CVG
