The PSP does seem to most just get ports from other console systems mostly it’s bigger brother the playstation 2 and SSX: Tour is another game that made the leap through the Debigifier (word stolen from Simpson’s) and on to the PSP.

There are certain words I never use, like “radical” and “totally” (in a TMNT phrasing) for example but as I probably won’t ever review a surfing game this is the closest game that I think I can get away with using them all the time.

The PSP version of the game offers some “Totally Radical” graphics and scenes, there are some “Gnarly” moments when your character will be performing some “wicked” trick and a lens flare will shoot across the screen in a “Totally Bodacious” way. (That’s enough of that I think)

Graphically the game is stunning and the tracks themselves are pretty large and well made. The one thing that impressed me was solid trees, I half expected that it would be possible to just go through them as at some points there are so many and hitting them will often throw you off your board. The same probably runs better than almost any other game I have played on the PSP, there doesn’t seem to be any moments of lag or where it is obvious they have cut back on something to make it run better.

Tracks are about 3-5 minutes long which make them just the right size for most short trips if you are out and about with your PSP.

The audio on the game kind of takes a back seat to the graphics; sound effects are often drowned out by some terrible music track. I have played other SSX games and none of the ones I played had such a rubbish list of songs. As for the sound effects there aren’t many really and often environmental sounds like birds are just repeated later in the same track.

Although the tracks are of a decent size it takes quite some time to get to different tracks, at least the first few hours of the game you are stuck on 2-3 tracks repeating them over and over just in different race styles.

The tricks in the game is where it shines, pulling off extravagant flips and spins as blinding speeds really works well, but my one negative experience is that it requires that you change from the analogue to the d-pad to perform spins, something which can be quite hard on the shorter jumps.

There are several different game types, races, time trials, elimination and board style. Elimination is where you must just not come last to progress to the next race and board style is through points from tricks.

The inclusion of skis in the game just means that you are repeating everything you have done with the snow boards just again with skis and the experience just isn’t different enough to make it worth playing through really.

This game is good but single player wise it is just a bit the same-y after the first few hours. Multiplayer wise it’s pretty good but does require you have people in the room with you rather than through wifi. Worth checking out if you can find it cheap but this isn’t a long term game really.