SSX 3 Xbox One X Enhanced Preview

I'll always have fond memories of the SSX series starting with Tricky and of course leading towards SSX 3. It's very rare to go back to a game you used to love and still see it as appealing due to the way games age. They're still usually fun, but they lack that certain style your nostalgia remembers them as. That's what's great about enhancements on Xbox One X, the updates make the games look like how you remember them. It's incredible and with 16X the pixel count on the premium console it looks stunning, or at least amazing compared to what I thought it might appear as.

You can then compare that to the Xbox One S model getting 4X the pixel count which is still an improvement. The SSX 3 Xbox One X enhanced update is just such a treat and with the full 16x9 widescreen support it looks perfect filling up the whole screen in glorious 4k. The character models, the terrain and so many objects within the environment look amazing. That being said, the backdrops are fairly fuzzy and a number of other elements also carry that odd look. Still, considering the age of this title and that they actually made it Xbox Backwards Compatible considering the licensing, this Original Xbox game is beautiful.

It would be quite something to hear from a developer on the original release about how they think it looks now. I highly doubt it was ever even thought that the game might end up in 4k down the road and still hold up so well. Visuals aside, this game is damn fun. I really haven't enjoyed a gaming session like that for awhile. It was just pure enjoyment as I quickly relearned how to pull off mad tricks and conquer the hills. This is one of those games where it's incredibly accessible, yet has a higher level of mastery to it as you combine your special moves.

There are goals such as a high score to get or to win the race, but you can also have fun going around the slopes without a care. I never felt pressured to achieve anything and that was nice, it's a big change from the recent take on the series. The whole deadly mountains of the last SSX just wasn't good and that's my most recent memory of this franchise so going back to this reminded me of why it was such a good set of games. This was well worth the purchase for me as I did actually have to grab this one since the disc is somewhere and it was a blast to play. If you were a fan of the soundtrack, that's all back too which is magic from EA.

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