Oh man, give me another SSX any time. I'm done with EA just sitting on the IP.
That said, I do personally disagree with a lot that the OP says, like
- I'll take the SSX3 style over the Tricky style any day.
- I don't feel like either point the OP made under 'Ditch Open-World' are actually faults that were caused by the game being open-world, both points could easily be addressed while still also keeping the open-world design (which mind you, was essentially nothing more than just the ability to string multiple single tracks together).
- I don't want create-a-boarder to return, as I personally feel like the generic characters were a huge part of SSX on Tour missing so much personality. The over the top characters from Tricky and 3 were a huge part what made SSX imo.
- I personally much rather have a very well designed mountain with deliberate designs and limited set pieces than some elaborate tool to allow me to play the janky ass stages that the users might make. I would probably have loved to see such a feature pop up if the SSX series was ongoing and succesful, but at this point they need to prove if they can still make a good SSX game. An mediocre SSX with editor will always be mediocre, while a good SSX without that can still get it in a sequel without the series going under the ice for another decade.
Because a lot of the games after Tricky and SSX3 are usually dismissed, I also wanna sum up some of the good things those games have added to the series, cause while 3 and tricky are evergreens, all the games in the series were fun for their own merits.
- SSX on Tour despite being somewhat of a low budget affair in a bunch of places, still had a lot of very cool and unique track designs, definitely holding up to the games before it if you can look through the somewhat cheap aesthetics. It also opened the series up to more music styles that fit the game well.
- SSX Blur while failing at the gameplay part by continuing the On Tour slomo tricks, poorly implemented motion controls and lack of new content, the game added a very interesting style to the game which imo worked a lot better than some of the more realistic interpretations of SSX. It could've very well been one of the best SSX games ever made if it wasn't for the controls, as the game basically combined some of the best SSX3 maps with the best SSX on Tour maps and made a new mountain out of it. My dream sequel would probably follow the same idea Blur had and combine all the best tracks from all the SSX games into a new mountain. The Junkie XL soundtrack deserves a shoutout as well, as it was very well implemented (just hard to appreciate in a series where almost all games have an amazing soundtrack).
- SSX 2012 was in many ways a dream game to good to be true. By using their 'scan the mountain' technology they were able to create a huge amount of tracks, which while also creating a bunch of bad tracks and similarly themed tracks, there were also a bunch of amazing tracks which allowed for a lot of variety in the different modes. In peoples memory mostly all the fall off stages get remembered which is a shame cause there were a lot of really good track designs as well. Combined with a online system that had online events you could join that allowed for asynchronous multiplayer that can mostly be described as a trackmania kind of experience (later on in its life a more traditional multiplayer experience got patched in as well), this game was taken to another level if you had some friends that were into the game as well as it allowed for a cozy "jump from event to event with your friends" type of experience. The deadly descents part of the game, while occasionally adding unwanted mechanics to races and trick events, can also be very fun ways to play the game when the pure focus was on survival. There were definitely a couple of trash ones, but stuff like dodging trees through a foggy forest, making your way through a dark mountain with just a headlamp or surviving the (non-reversed camera'd) avalanche tracks made for some of the most exhilarating gameplay experiences in that game. So much so I still wonder to this day if this game would've turned out better if it didn't try to please the SSX crowd as much as it tried after the initial Deadly Descents reveal.
Just for reference with the things I said, this would how I'd personally rank the games:
1: SSX3
2: SSX Tricky
3: SSX 2012
4: SSX on Tour
5: SSX
6: SSX Blur
That said I still highly appreciate every entry in the series and still play the top 4 of those games pretty much yearly, so yeah, any type of new game or remake or remaster would be appreciated at this point.
