I bought my Playstation 2 back at the beginning of February and since then have rented and played a lot of crap titles. But one that I actually own and haven’t regretted for a second shelling out 50 big ones for is EA Sports Big’s SSX.

The game is a snowboarding game with controls, visuals and audio that shows off the Playstation 2’s power and finesse, but it’s not just a flashy eye candy title to boast the PS2’s power. It’s a must-have for its intense game play and replay value.

The premise is pretty simple — you’re racing others down slopes filled with obstacles and perils that also offer you the best areas to get trick points and showoff what a badass you are.

These trick points are part of what make this game better than any other freestyle game I’ve played. Sure in the old Cool Boarders titles, you could do tricks to showoff, but you’ve still got to finish the race. In SSX, by doing tricks you earn boost that you can use at will, enticing you to have a good mixture of style and speed through the courses. Why developers never thought of this concept before is a mystery, but congrats to the SSX development team.

The controls are very precise and you have total control over your snow boarder, thanks to the PS2’s analog controller. I must admit though I’m a little disappointed in the PS2’s controllers. I’ve already broken one from playing SSX day and night. My R1 button tends to stick a lot now and is worthless for playing SSX now. But that’s not SSX’s fault. Blame Sony on that one. Regardless, the controls are great.

Tricks are performed via the four shoulder buttons (L1, L2 and R1, R2) to do board grabs, while the control stick or pad are used to do flips and spins. It will take several runs to perfect jumps and grabs and a few more to figure out the flips and spins. It’s a little frustrating, but never to the point that playing SSX is not a complete joy.

The courses are absolute works of art, and no screenshot I’ve seen yet has done the breath-taking graphics justice. At our new townhouse, we’re going to have a larger TV and I can’t wait to boot up SSX on that baby.

The game’s frame rate is absolutely amazing and gives a great feeling of the rush of speed. In the two player split-screen racing, the graphics and frame rate drop noticeably, but the game is still amazing.

Another addition that adds a lot to the game play is the fact that the courses are so long, and all have multiple ways to make it to the finish lines. Some of the courses take upwards of 8-10 minutes to complete and there’s a lot of variation on how you get from start to finish — enough to keep most interested in the game for long periods of time.

I have nothing bad to say about this game. It’s great fun and doesn’t lose any of that fun as I play it more and more. The competition gets tougher as you get better, so it’s constantly a challenge.

If you have a PS2, this should be in your collection. Word is SSX DVD is coming out by Christmas. I don’t know the details on it, but am interested to see how they are going to improve on such a sweet game.