However, the brilliance of this game means that you must use both aspects to do well. For example, if you want to race fast, then you will need to do tricks. Why? Because when you jump, and land successfully, the adrenaline meter on the side of the screen builds up, turning from a pale yellow to a blood red after a run of good jumps. At this point you will be able to use an adrenaline boost which will dramatically increase your speed, and send you flying past your opponents. In a similar way, on trick modes, it is important to achieve a good deal of speed in order to gain a large enough amount of airtime to pull of the best tricks. As a finely tuned point to the boost system, the power of the boost is determined by how full the gauge is, so if the gauge is dark red, then you will be given a far more useful boost than if it is simply yellow. As you progress in the game, you'll soon find yourself building large amounts of boost at each of the jumps on the courses, and you'll also start knowing exactly when to use them, and for how long. The beauty of the boost is that it is very intuitive, and will allow you to become proficient at using it extremely quickly. You will soon discover that the boost is a vital part of winning races, especially against some of the tougher computer players. It is important to maintain a high level of boost, and use it to steam past opponents, waving as you go!

However, before you can go storming down the slopes, its important to know the controls. Again, SSX comes up with the goods, and delivers an extremely well designed set-up. With the default controls, you'll be given the shoulder buttons as the grabs. Pressing different combinations of these buttons will lead to different grabs during the jump. That means there are 15 different grabs, which when combined with the different types of spins and flips, leads to an awesome array of tricks to attempt. It doesn't take long before you can pull off huge spins and combos, and to do this, it will require good long wind ups before a jump, allowing those extra fast spins. When you feel ready for a challenge, you can attempt to complete each of the characters trick books. Each book has 50 tricks, which get increasingly difficult towards the end of the book. If you can complete all the tricks, then there is little that can stop you from succeeding in this game.

The graphical prowess of the game does not stop with the awesome tracks and backgrounds though. It just gets better when you see the superbly animated characters. There are eight in all, (of which 4 must be unlocked) and though they have a cartoon style nature, each one looks frighteningly realistic. You would be very hard pressed to find a fault with the character design. There are no jagged edges, just a classy presentation of each character.

There was a big worry that there would be a bit of slow-down in this game, but fortunately, there seems to be virtually no noticeable slowing in one or two player. Instead of seeing any slow down, you'll be staring at the snow spray effects as your snowboard slices through the snow, and all of the other amazing graphical effects.