1080: Avalanche (prices):

• Official sequel to the hit N64 racer 1080: Snowboarding
  Play as five different snowboarders including Ricky Winterborn and Rob Haywood


• Unlock new boards including a penguin


• Bust out a variety of different grabs, spins and flips for style and points
  
• In Match Race, shred down 15 standard tracks on novice, hard and expert modes. Then unlock Extreme Challenge and race seven additional courses


• Other modes include Gate Challenge, Trick Attack and Time Trial


• Features four-player split-screen multi player mode


• Four-player LAN


• Progressive scan support


• Dolby Pro Logic II support


• Requires three memory blocks for saves

(resource IGN)

SSX 3 (prices):

• Officially the 3rd installment of the SSX franchise coming from the Playstion 2's launch list


• Unlock new boards, artwork, players and new clothing


• Bust out a variety of different grabs, spins and flips for style and points
  
• Two player Multi-play


• Progressive scan support


• THX Game Audio


• Requires three memory blocks for saves

1080 Avalanche is utterly Nintendo. From presentation and graphics, to gameplay and philosophy. While this is a matter of taste ultimately, I think the company aims for a younger audience with its presentation style, and it is starting to grate on me that they refuse to continue to refine their previously fantastic level of polish. Nintendo continues to hang their hat on there previous success, which while being only a few years old, in the world of video games are decades old and beginning to loose their luster and value. Nintendo's greatest success of the year was Metroid Prime, a game that broke new ground, invented a genre and did not aim to recreate the previous franchise but to elevate it and evolve it into a new era. The presentation of 1080 is the same as Mario Kart, Wave Race, Mario Golf and each of Nintendo's other re-hash tiles of late.

The game leverages everything from the first game, updates the graphics and adds a minimum of elements to the previous formula of Easy (blue), Hard (green) and Expert (black), and the unlockable Extreme course layout and Time Trial, Trick Attack and Gate Challenge modes. There are a few additions, a balance meter for correcting poor landings, which is well done and uses a slow down effect and a twisting of the joystick to regain your balance, as well as a grind balance meter ala THPS. The addition of the balance system in 1080 is good, fun and better than the SSX system of repeatedly pressing the B to regain your balance. The graphics of 1080:A are less than impressive, and really hearken back to the original more than they should. In the end 1080 is a remake of the original, in almost as much as the Resident Evil remake was, updated graphics and some different approaches, but overall there is little new.

I also liked last years SSX Tricky, but not as much as the original 1080, I felt like the trick system was too over the top and just too unrealistic. I felt like I finished it rather quickly and never was really compelled to continue to play it. I was wary of the new incarnation because I think I tend to like the more realistic sports games. SSX 3 takes a free roaming, truer, GTA 3, True Crime, style system of goals. I may be in the minority of people who finds this a bit off putting at first. I am an old school gamer in a lot of ways and like to have goals and finish them and on to the next goal, this is much the way 1080 operates (in traditional Nintendo fashion) so I was initially a little lost with SSX. you have one open peak and start out sort of randomly placed at the top of the hill, the runs are treated much like a real mountain and each run has its out place in the games freeride, race and freestyle modes of play. So you can choose to skate by the race run and on to the freestyle run, much like a real mountain. After a few chances with the game I was able to understand the game philosophy and learn to love the flexibility, but nonetheless the game has not training mode and little to no explanation of what you are supposed to do. The training mode is replaced by a PDA style device which has "email" style messages on it which you can read to figure out what you are supposed to do, not the funnest addition to a video game ever, but it is there. SSX is only 2 player multi-layer versus 1080's 4 player which never skips a frame. The biggest draw back of SSX is just how easy it is to fly out of bounds where the game forces a respawn, as you play you learn where you can and can't go, but for a game that forces you to find faster routes down the course, and that has such huge spanning environments it is disappointing and frustrating.

In the end SSX has better graphics, more tricks, more replay and more fun, while 1080 is a rehash of a 5 year old game on a new system.