[Beretta55]

I for the most part agree with you, there is however a few things I also don't agree with.

I really didn't see how the controls were fluid, you could get use to them given enough time but I still felt the mechanics could have spent more time in the oven. I know each Wii game (most of them at least) have a learning curve not applied to any other games, but when you play this game for the first ten minutes and know how to handle the Wiimote pretty well originally. Only to see your boarder waling around in the snow like a retard and hard to keep him balanced, you have some issues. Still the controls aren't all that bad, but looking at it from the angle of a SSX vet who has been with the series since the first one and from the terms of the newcomer, the controls are ridiculously hard to grip unless you have the time to get use to them. Then with SSX always being a nice pick up and play game it goes against its original style completely. I know if I spent more time with the controls I'd get the hang of it, but they felt like they could of been smoother, it just feels hard to play just for no reason at all and I feel this kind of game is ill-fated for the Wii anyway. Unless you put 100% effort into the controls games like this will bomb, and I hardly expect that effort from EA anymore.

I completely agree with how they make you do ubertricks in the game. Somebody at EA must have moonlighted as a late night sadist because trying to do uber tricks with all those flippin' stupid motions is just futile. They are hard to see, you don't have enough time to get them off most of the time because the game is fast paced. I mean wouldn't a simple "move wiimote to the left, and then to the right" suffice? It may not be "flashy" to do like some gamers would want but with a game as fast as this, you don't have all day to play the 'invisible shapes game" in the air just to do a stupid move. It pretty much ruined the game for me, since my main thing of play in these games is tricks and high scores, I love to do that more then racing. So the ubertricks being impossible to pull off, I got very annoyed and fast.

I also agree with your "hip kids" look. But the entire series besides the first SSX has tapped into that "idiot hipsters" thing. You can't tell me the characters for SSX Tricky and 3 were not in some form hipster fashion idiots, the entire series has been this way if you ask me and On Tour didn't suddenly start this trend. Only a few characters from the entire SSX series has struck me as mature or sophisticated, the rest of them are as big mouthed and obnoxious as Mac. Some characters I felt who weren't like this were Hiro and Jurgen from SSX one and they were never seen again. Only to be hidden characters in SSX3 and given no real personality. While characters like Psymon, Zoë, and Luther are just horrible, horrible stereotypes. Moby is one of the few who I have liked as the series has moved on and I like Mac to a point, I guess every game needs that obnoxious cool guy so he does alright. But characters like Psymon, Zoë, Luther, and JP just make me want to kick them off the mountain.

So I really can't agree with you that On Tour started the hipster kids phase, it has always been there at least in my view. This is coming from a company that probably has old men sitting around asking what the kids like and throw in every obnoxious thing they can to appeal to them. The gameplay saved a lot of that annoyance some of the characters have served throughout the series and since Blur can be annoying to play, that sort of eliminates my desire to play it. So you say the characters themselves look like high school drop-outs and I do agree. But they had the annoying "too cool for school" attitude and personality way before they got into those stupid clothes, but that's just how I saw it.

It really was a disappointing game though; I loved the series ever since I got it for my launch-era PS2. I feel the series is suffering from just gameplay repetition, the ridiculous attitudes of the characters (I know this game is larger then life and unrealistic, but there is no excuse on gods green earth for a character like Luther. A hillbilly on a snowboard? That tops my list on things that destroy my grey matter. ), the fashion. It's like a band that started out underground and got a cult following, then they got popular and that's fine. Nobody should hold it against them it got popular and more people loved it but then they just more and more ridiculous as the years went on that they aren't even who they originally were starting out. Just a horrible parody of themselves, trying anything to still stay relevant. They thought the Wii version and the controls would help but it didn't. They have to fine tune them more, make them smoother, eliminate the annoying way to do ubertricks and tone down on the high school fashion bullcrap and the series can be great again.