It has been a long time since I completely lost track of time while playing a game. My friend and I went out to rent a game so that we could try out more GameCube titles. We decided on EA BIG's SSX Tricky, because of the massive amounts both it and its predecessor had received on the PS2. We rented the title at about 9:00pm eastern time. It is now 2:13am and I have just recently stopped playing the game.

SSX Tricky combines downhill snowboard racing with insane trick combos. But that's not all, you can't forget to mix in the INSANE style that the title has.

SSX Tricky is fast, but it's not as fast as I thought it would be initially. The animation is smooth and only rarely did I see any hint of framerate slowdown. Previous reports on other sites have said that the framerate in this title can be downright awful but I haven't seen anything bad at all, even when I was looking for it.

The controls are weird. But, I guess that's what you get when you try to move a game totally designed for the PS2 controller over to the GameCube's unique pad. If there is one gripe with the control it is at time it can be quite uncomfortable. And by "some times" I mean "whenever you have to press both R and Z at the same time." It's clear that Nintendo never really thought that someone would have to press both buttons together. Another small problem is that the Y button resets your character (which basically means it picks them up and drops them back down onto the course). This function, which is rarely used, is mapped onto a face button. I think EA BIG would have been much better off mapping reset to Z and the 3rd grab button to Y.

Sound is important in games, this is a known fact. EA BIG also seems to know this, very very well. The sound in Tricky is fantastic. All the tunes are flat out awesome and the sound effects are ever better than that. When you pull off an insane stunt and get your turbo meter up to full the game chimes in with a clip from it's theme song "It's Tricky" by RUN DMC. The sound bite actually changes it's tempo to match the tempo of the current background song, and it fits seamlessly into the music.

The gameplay is, in a single word, beautiful. The characters control well, given the less than perfect control setup. The idea of pulling off stunts in midair in order to gain boost speed is genius. It adds a whole second element to the standard gameplay of a downhill snowboard racing game.

SSX Tricky is an awesome title and I suggest you all go out and rent it or buy it or put it on your holiday gift list or something. Do anything you have to, just play this game. You may think you don't like this title before you play it. It may seem like it's not in your genre. Trust me; try it and you will probably like it.