Games You Forgot Were Awesome #1: SSX (2012)

By Oliver Giles

Available On: Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation3.

The world was an interesting place in 2012.

The San Francisco Giants won their second World Series title on the way to what would become a baseball dynasty, the James Bond franchise turned 50 years old, and game studio/publisher Electronic Arts were in the middle of an identity crisis.

While EA will likely always be most known for their sports titles, including such franchises as Fifa, Madden, and the legendary Skate series, they had also been responsible for some great non-sport-related games up to that point. These include several James Bond 007 titles, the brilliant sci-fi horror franchise Dead Space, the cult classic Burnout series, and of course, Need For Speed.

However, around the start of the 2010s, the company was looking to introduce some new IPs into the mix. This included their acquisition of exclusive Star Wars game-making rights, a new look at their mega-hit series Battlefield, and two smaller projects that would eventually form into the Titanfall and Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare series, respectively.

And in the middle of all of this, someone had the idea to try and reboot SSX.

While the arcade-style snowboarding series certainly had good ratings and a decent cult following, SSX games never really flew off the shelves the way EA’s other sports titles did. This made it somewhat of a shock when the simply titled SSX released in 2012, a full five years after the last SSX game, the rather disappointing SSX Blur.

Onto the game itself.

SSX, commonly referred to as SSX 2012, is an incredible arcade-style game while also being perfect for anyone who loves board-based games such as the Tony Hawk franchise.

Plummeting down hills at speeds of well over 100 mph, this game gives you complete control of your character’s movement with a variety of different control schemes. Despite the game being nearly a decade old at the time of this writing, the control styles available have aged surprisingly well and don’t feel clunky like other similar games from that era.

Not only is it fun to play, but the well-designed game environments, awesome tricks, and insane jumps will have you constantly utilizing your console’s video capture system so you can watch yourself nail the perfect landing over and over again. So if you want that rush of 2010’s nostalgia gaming, SSX 2012 is a near-perfect choice.

Sadly, despite the game doing well both critically and financially, EA chose not to continue with the reboot of the series for whatever reason. Rumors would surface every so often that some EA-owned studio, such as the now-defunct Black Box, was working on some kind of follow-up game, only to be repeatedly squashed by EA. This didn’t stop the game from gaining a rather persistent cult following and, just this past year, acknowledged the title’s existence by adding it to their EA Play library on Xbox.

While this doesn’t necessarily mean another SSX title is coming, fans did manage to make enough noise for EA to announce another Skate game almost a decade after Skate 3. So who knows, maybe if the gaming community shows enough support, we can finally get this long-underrated back on track.

Until then, you can always pick up a physical copy of this game for Xbox 360 and PS3 or play it for free with an EA Play subscription on Xbox One/Series X. Sorry, PC gamers, this one just wasn’t meant for you.