Metal Jesus here, and today we're gonna do
something a little bit different, we're gonna
do a Let's Play of one of my favorite games
of all time, that is SSX 3 for the original
Xbox.
Now I think a lot of people are surprised
that this is one of my all time favorite games,
and in this video you're gonna find out why
because I'm gonna tell you all about it.
We're gonna play the game, but this game is
kinda different in that it has a mode where
literally you start at the top of the mountain,
and you snowboard in real time through three
different peaks.
There's no load screens, it's pretty, pretty
damn cool, we're gonna do it right now, let's
take a look.
All right, so here we are, SSX 3, one of the
most awesome games ever made, and I just want
you to know I've turned off the music because,
you know, YouTube and copyright and all that
sort of stuff, but this game does have a pretty
awesome soundtrack, it's got some really cool
electronic stuff, some remix stuff.
Typically when I play this game, I do have
the soundtrack cranking.
So what we're gonna do is we're going to conquer
the mountain, and again I mentioned that one
of my favorite parts about this is that it's
one continuous mountain, with three different
peaks, and each one of those peaks is very
different.
You actually start trying to conquer the lower
peak first and then you'll graduate up to
the second peak and then the third peak is
the toughest.
In my game here I've unlocked everything for
a couple of characters, so we're gonna go
here.
Here's the character select screen, and this
series typically has had some really great
characters.
When I originally played this game, I played
it on the PlayStation 2, and I had played
it a ton, as I'm sure I'll tell you about.
But in that game, Drunken Master Paul and
I unlocked pretty much most of the characters
to their max.
You notice that they go to 11 here, it goes
to 11, and in this game on the Xbox here I've
restarted it.
I have Viggo maxed out, I also have Psymon
maxed out, but he doesn't have the entire
mountain unlocked, but man does he look metal
or what with that skull?
Some of my favorite characters are Zoe.
Zoe's like this punk-rock chick, I love her
shredded Def Leppard jeans and stuff.
I haven't unlocked everything for her, and
then like I said Viggo we're gonna play.
Elise is a pretty cool character, she's pretty
hot.
I also really like Allegra and then also Kaori,
but for this game again we're gonna play as
Viggo.
And you notice here that he is, I don't know
why I did this, but he has like this light
blue wedding tux, with devil horns, shades,
and then he's got these flaming hands.
It just seemed kinda weird, so, we're gonna
go with him, we're gonna jump into it here.
So, right off the bat it throws you into the
game, but we're gonna jump into the transport,
and we're gonna go all the way up to peak
three.
Notice here that this is kinda what I'm talking
about, we have the mountain, and you have
these peaks that are tied together, so we're
gonna jump up to peak three, which is the
toughest one.
And we're gonna ride all the way from The
Throne, so notice how I can select here, The
Throne is the very top, and we're gonna ride
it all the way down, in real time to the bottom.
It takes about a half an hour and it's a total
blast, so let's do The Throne.
This is one of the animations that, the load
screens essentially, where you hop into a
helicopter, it takes you all the way up to
the top.
The cool thing about The Throne and the top
of the mountain is that it's pretty harsh
up here, so you're so high up, there's a lot
of frozen snow, a lot of wind, not very many
trees, and you'll see that the terrain will
change dynamically as we play this game, so
we're gonna hop out here in a second.
And we're off, cool.
Now, right off the bat, I'm gonna say I'm
not the best player at this game, there are
lots of people who are probably way better
than me.
I'm pretty decent at this game, but I think
there's an awful lot to explore in this game
and it's tough to be like a master, but I
did play it for almost an entire year.
This came out actually at a time when I had
lost my job, and it was the very first time
that I had ever been unemployed, and I was
pretty bummed, I was kind of like scared,
I was like I didn't know what's gonna happen
in my life.
I was you know, collecting unemployment, oops.
Oh, I made that.
Anyways, and SSX 3 came out.
Ugh, so close.
SSX 3 came out, and it was kind of the perfect
game.
I had played the first couple of games and
really enjoyed them, and then this game came
out, and it's just this open world game, there's
tons of stuff to explore and I was really
able to just, again play it for like almost
an entire year, it was like the perfect game
for me.
Here is where you get to see sort of the kinda
open worldness.
Back there I could've gone left, or you can
go right, and you get kind of a different
experience depending on how you go.
I watched some gameplay footage of other players
playing this game, and you constantly learn
new stuff.
Again kind of like an open world game, you
can kind of go wherever you want, but the
level design here though is masterful.
Because, there's so many lines that you can
take that just make sense and are fun to explore,
and there's not too many dead ends or areas
where it'll screw you over if you venture
off the beaten path.
This is one of my favorite sections of this
particular part of the level, and that is
where there are all these kind of, I don't
know what you call these, like snow veins
or something like that, but basically places
where you can kind of, oops, go back and forth,
build up your uber.
Another thing you'll notice here that I believe
was new to the third game was the ability
to recover, and that's very, very nice, I
don't know if they got that from Tony Hawk
or what but it used to be where if you crash,
you kind of have to wait, it'd be kinda frustrating.
In this game if you hammer the square button
quickly enough, you can recover, which is
pretty nice.
Also you'll notice there that I got a little
bit of money, and sprinkled throughout the
game are a bunch of these little snowflakes
that basically help you build up your purse
to unlock things like new songs, new outfits,
new boards and things like that.
All right so, that was the very first part
of it, and now what we're gonna do is choose
how we want to continue the game.
And you'll see what I mean, see this board
coming up here?
That's essentially the menu, so we want to
look for the race, because the race allows
you to do freeplay, but you could choose to
do a pipe or go for big air and stuff like
that, but that's kinda how you can continually
snowboard in this game.
You can also go to the lodge here, and that's
where you would update your character.
What else do you do at the lodge?
Oh, you also move around and stuff like that.
You use the lodge a lot whenever you're playing
just sort of the main, I was gonna say the
main quest, but essentially when you're trying
to unlock stuff.
We don't want to go to the super pipe we want
to go to race.
Every race in this game gives you the ability
to do free run or free whatever it's called.
There's a downed airplane there, and you notice
it's a lot of ice, oops, a lot of sliding
around, there's not a lot of deep snow here,
so it's very fast.
So we're gonna go here, so you'll notice as
we approach the race, we could race, but again
I'm trying to do this all in real time so
you'll see it'll give me the option.
It's a little bit confusing, to be honest,
at the top of the mountain here, you're not
quite sure where you need to go, but see here,
see freeride, big challenge, or I could go
in there, and I could race some people.
So we're gonna go around here.
Now, notice that, that's a challenge that
you could do, where it'd be like do specific
amount of tricks, there's a bunch of different
sort of challenges in the game that are just
sprinkled throughout levels, which is kind
of fun.
Again, a ton of content in this.
Also notice that out of bounds right there,
oops, really went out of bounds.
Typically those are shortcuts, and handy shortcuts,
too.
This level, as you'll see, is pretty fast,
it's very steep, and it's much, much easier
whenever you've leveled up a character like
I have because you can turn fairly sharply.
Oh, there we go, nice little ride there.
But again, there's a bunch of different ways
to do this particular level, lots of hidden
stuff.
I do like this level a lot because you just
basically just need to hold on, hold on tight.
That's a nice little air right there, and
woo-hoo!
Here we go, notice that, oh, out of bounds,
there we go, yay, little shortcut.
Can I do that there?
Hey, hey I actually did it.
Yay, that's a cool a ride, that's a cool ride.
Again, you don't have to do that right there,
you could literally just go on either side
of it.
Notice here that it says "super uber" and
I believe that's new, it's been so long since
I've played Tricky, the second one, but I
believe super uber is new to this one where
there's literally two levels of tricks where
they just get more and more outrageous as
it goes along, which is one of my favorite
parts of this game is that, this game doesn't
try to be a simulator.
It's not realistic in any way, it's just fun.
It's very similar to Tony Hawk, really.
I'm sure that probably the developers were
going after that Tony Hawk vibe, you know?
Which is what I like, I like arcade games.
And right now it starts counting down for
me to do the next uber trick.
So I'm spelling out super uber here.
That right there is a little modifier that
speeds up your trick and there I've spelled
super uber.
And that is the end of that area, and notice
that the fence pushes me to the right to keep
on going to the next area.
But again, it can be kind of tricky to get
through all this, tricky, it's tricky.
Because, oops, you're not sure where to go
sometimes.
You just kinda have to trust the game to guide
you down the mountain.
Usually these sections are pretty straightforward,
oops, but you do have to kind of pay attention.
Like, I need to go to the race area otherwise
I'll be stuck doing a, you know, an event,
which I don't wanna do, not this time.
Okay, all right, so we're in the next section.
Notice that it's now this kind of like red,
sort of, I don't know if it's kind of a morning
glow or what, but it's beautiful, beautiful
lighting.
Speaking of which this game, when it was first
announced, there was a bunch of people who
worked in Hollywood movies who actually worked
on this game to do some of the special effects,
specifically when it comes to some of the
snow.
So, for instance, some of the glitter that's
happening, the sunlight glistening.
I don't know what I'm saying.
I don't know what the technical term is, but
basically the sunlight like on levels like
this where you can kind of see it bouncing
off around the snow, that really wasn't done
that much in these type of games.
Some of the other lighting special effects
just all involving snow were handled by people
from Hollywood who kind of knew how to do
that sort of stuff, and it shows.
I think this game is a beautiful game, I love
how it changes the look and feel.
This is a really awesome track here, so now
we're actually into the track, can I get up
there?
Yes, yay.
That reminds me, one of the parts that they
did really well in this game is the riding
of rails, you do that an awful lot in this
game, but more than that actually you can
also do trickies off of rails as well, and
it's pretty satisfying.
This is a big jump here, let's go crazy, see
what we can do.
There we go, yeah, can't do that in real life,
you'd probably die, you'd probably like twist
off your head or something, all right, here
we go.
One of the interesting things is that around
this time, I was really getting into the PSP
and they released a version of this game on
the PSP.
And for the most part actually it's a pretty
decent port.
You know the PSP is pretty powerful, it can
do these type of graphics in this kind of
game really well.
But the one place where they really screwed
up the PSP version was the rails.
And I don't know what it was, but getting
on rails in the PSP version is just a pain
in the butt, you'll get knocked and screwed
up all the time on it, it's just so frustrating.
It's kind of a bummer, because again when
that came out, I was playing a lot of PSP
and, you know, when one of your favorite franchises
doesn't do so well on the system, you're kind
of bummed.
This is a fun level too, because I'm bypassing,
oops, a bunch of other ways to do this level,
and you're gonna see more of those coming
up here.
Man, the trickies in this game are just crazy,
out of bounds, oh, no.
Let's take this way, remember those upside
down 7-Up ads?
It's pretty funny, this game also had some
other ad placements, like, there's a Honda,
I forget what it is, Honda had this kind of
CRV-RAV thing, and this game, oops, well that
was good, this game allowed you to, like,
snowboard through one.
There's definitely some product placement
in this, not a big deal.
But yeah right there, what is that called?
I have no idea what that thing is, but there's
one level in the game where literally you
can snowboard through the open door of that
thing.
That was a little bit sloppy, but I ended
up down here in this kind of tunnel, not the
best place to be because the snow's kind of
deep, you don't go too fast.
Here's...oh, oh, oh, don't crash, oh.
That happens because I'm a little bit too
fast of a character.
All right, and that is that area, and we're
gonna continue on.
Now, one thing that we're missing here, if
you're looking at this for the first time,
and that is that for every one of the these
that I'm just going on a race, I'm actually
skipping past a lot of the different levels.
So there's dedicated pipe levels on each peak,
there's also different runs, like, completely
different runs that you could hit up, that
I am just skipping.
Transport lodge, okay, so we're gonna go this
way.
Okay, we're gonna go race.
It can be kind of confusing, especially the
first time you play this you're like, "Where
do I go?"
But for the most part when you first start
playing this game you just kinda do everything,
you know?
That's the fun thing, you just explore.
Again, because it's an open world game and
I spent an entire year exploring this game,
and I feel like I still don't know where everything
is.
Another thing to note is that I believe it's
only the PlayStation 2 version was the version
that supported multiplayer, and I did a bit
of that when this first came out, and it was
really fun.
I don't think the Xbox did, although it should
have, but I don't know.
Sadly no more, okay.
Okay, this is a really fun run here too, pretty
steep, you need to be able to corner really
well.
There's lots of rail riding on this level
if you want.
Oh, oh-ho.
I'm digging his flaming hands, I don't know
why.
It's kind of dumb, but let's ride this, there
we go.
This game blisters along too, it's gotta be
60 frames a second.
That's a nice big jump there, there we go.
I'm gonna take a little shortcut here, oh.
All right.
You know, it's funny I don't really need money
in this game, oops, but it's still fun to
collect those snowflakes, you know, they're
always placed in really interesting, ah God,
ah, suck.
They're always placed in really interesting,
you know, challenging places.
Am I gonna die here?
Oh, there we go, that works.
All right, that was sloppy, but I'll take
it.
All right, heading into some fog, oops, oh,
no, no, no, ah.
I just want to push him.
We're gonna enter a part of the level which
is kind of interesting, it's almost like a
Tibetan kind of Asian vibe here.
You're gonna see it in a second.
Yeah, see right there.
Oh, you know what?
I just saw that I could've gone left, huh,
learned something new.
Here we go, oh, that was a close one, three
different rails.
Let's take the left one, oh, or not.
All right we'll take this one, here, you look
good.
You noticed I trickied on that, kind of fun.
And you can chain those together if the rails
line up, and you can do some crazy combos,
again, I've seen people online do stuff like
this that are just God-like.
Oh, damn, not doing so hot.
Here we go, you can go left or straight here,
we're gonna go straight.
Here's kind of fun where you just sort of
go through the forest, oops, whoa, and trees
start falling, because a storm's coming in.
Wow that was close, here we go.
Oh-ho, yes, thank you, woah.
There we go.
Monster Trick, super uber.
Oh, almost hit that tree, thank you, thank
you.
All right and I think we're approaching the
end, yes.
End of this part of it anyways.
Okay, cool, all right so we can go left or
right, let's go left.
I don't think it really matters I think it
takes you both places.
Yeah, so we're progressing along, this is
SSX.
So, you know, one of the reasons why SSX means
so much to me is because it was one of the
first games I ever played on the PlayStation
2.
I was pretty much a PC gamer at this point,
just coming off of Sierra and again I really
hadn't jumped into console gaming yet.
And my buddy, Beau, who I worked with at Sierra,
he's been on my channel, we did an IH episode
once.
He bought a PlayStation 2, and you know, for
the most part when that first came out, the
launch titles were okay, nothing really blew
me away.
However, he did pick up the original SSX,
and that was a PlayStation exclusive, and
initially we weren't really that impressed
with it.
However, it was the kind of game that really
exposed how much it had going on as you played
it.
And the reason why I that is because I remember
Beau calling me up excited because he figured
out how to chain some of the uber tricks and
stuff like that, I don't even know if they
were called uber back then, but basically
some of the tricks that you could do in that
game.
And there was just so much depth to it and
I'd come over to his house, he lived in another
city than me, he lived in Redman or Kirkland
or something like that.
This is a good area too, anyways, so I would
go over there, he'd show me SSX, we'd play
it, this is back when we were passing the
controller back and forth, and I tell you
what man, we learned to love SSX and just
dig into it and explore it.
It was the perfect mix of snowboarding and
Tony Hawk, and all those sort of things, and
we just loved it.
And then the second game came out which was
called Tricky, and they improved almost everything
about Tricky.
The characters got better, I love the characters
in Tricky, they got a bunch of Hollywood voice
actors to just come in and give their stamp
on the stuff, and they did such an amazing
job, they're so funny, that's the thing, Tricky
is really funny.
And we just identified with the characters
and just wanted to play them, we wanted to
unlock, excuse me, all their stuff, but then
also the level design and everything about
that game.
So, we played Tricky, oh my God, forever.
And then this game came out and it's funny
because I don't think Beau likes this game
as much as I do.
This is different, just different enough with
its whole open world, but if you're like me
and you have the time to explore it, I think
it's actually the better game.
The trick system's perfect, just everything
about it, and frankly this level here.
I like doing trickies off of, oh, oh, oh,
so close.
This was kind of the era too when a lot of
games were starting to do open world.
Grand Theft Auto 3 came out and I think a
lot of people saw the potential of doing open
worlds, loading all these crazy levels off
of DVD for the first time, and you started
seeing a lot of games do this.
SSX 3 obviously did this but, you know, just
some other games like, what was the one in
LA?
Oh, I actually pulled that off, wow.
Just a bunch of games just became kind of
open world, and not many of them, not all
of them did it well, oh, I missed that.
But this one did, this one did it really well.
Notice the change in the level, so we went
from really dark up at the top, and then in
the previous level we were kind of like morning
sort of, you know, that kind of red orange
tint, now it's a clear day, you can really
see the mountains in the background.
Oh, got lucky, all right.
That's the end of that section there.
I'm not sure what peak we're on, we're probably
on peak two.
I'll be honest, actually it's been a while
since I played this game.
Oh, this might be peak one, yes, okay, so
here we are.
So now we're approaching the end.
This is the last section of the game and it's
kind of weird it gets really dark, and there's
a city down there, and that's where we're
gonna end up.
But again, I wanna stress though that if you're
watching this for the first time I'm skipping
past at least half of the game.
See that super pipe right there?
That's it's own section.
Each one of those menus typically is like
a little bit different area, a different layout,
so there's a lot to explore.
And I don't know what our time is on here
but usually it takes me about a half an hour
to get down this thing.
All right, let's go Viggo.
I will say though, it's fun to do this, but
I do miss the other characters.
In racing, when you race in this, you race
the other characters that you can unlock and
there's a bit of a feel of Road Rash, the
motorcycle game where you can kind of punch
people.
There's an element of Road Rash in this game
when you do that kind of battling, which is
kind of fun and you can create rivalries and
all that stuff.
This is a level that has a bunch of different
ways to do it.
I'm not really sure which way is the quickest,
there's a lot of stuff to find in this level,
even on top of buildings, so you'll see a
jump that might look like it heads straight
towards a building but in reality there may
be something up there.
Dude, again I'm not the best player, clearly.
But oh, I could've got on that, I didn't.
Let's ride this, there we go.
That's fun.
There we go, there we go, there we go, oh,
nice.
Thank you, Viggo.
This is a fun jump.
Woo-hoo, that was fun.
Now I could go around there or...I guess I'm
gonna go around here.
Notice there's more cities, that's been a
common thing actually in this game.
In the first one, it's fun because you explore
this almost like sunken, well it's not sunken,
this like snowed-in city and you'll go through
the middle of buildings and stuff, it's pretty
cool.
You know, I should say that I've mentioned
that this is my favorite in the series, I
should probably talk about the other ones
too and that is SSX: On Tour, which is the
one that came out after this one which they
added skis and also it's got this kind of
hand-drawn art style.
It's okay, the level design is not as fun
as this, I don't know why.
Again, I think it's an okay game, I've played
it a lot and then the series I think kind
of died I don't think there was one after
that, oh, we're almost at the end here.
And then there was the reboot that happened
a couple years ago on, like, the PlayStation
3 and the Xbox, and that was a complete disappointment.
Again, it didn't have the characters, the
level design was okay, so that's it.
That is top to bottom, in real time, all three
peaks of SSX 3.
But anyways, getting back to the reboot, again
it just didn't have this over the top, fun,
arcade feel to it.
It was close, it just didn't have the magic.
What else can I talk about this?
I guess again, getting in here you can kind
of see what goes on in here, so for instance
peak three has a bunch of different, yeah,
so it has two races and then you can do the
all peak race, freestyle, freeride, and you
can jump to any of these at any time.
There's also money to be earned all that sort
of stuff.
So anyways, I've covered most of the, you
know, but that is my Let's Play of one of
my favorite games of all time, I hope you
guys enjoyed it.
I'd love to know what you think down in the
comments below.
And if you liked this video and like to see
more of them, I've got a lot of games I could
play.
All right, thanks for watching guys, and take
care.
So, that is my very first Let's Play video,
please be gentle.
I don't know if it was that good or not, but
I honestly had a ton of fun doing it.
The time just flew by, but again I was playing
one of my all time favorite games, but I could
see me doing this with a lot of other games
that I own and enjoy playing, or maybe even
some that I just suck at, who knows?
Could be kind of fun, let me know down in
the comments below, thanks for watching.
