SSX Blur

The next game in snowboarding series SSX takes it "back to its roots", sources claim.

Speculation is rampant that a new game in the SSX series is in the works after internet sleuths spotted EA- registered domains relating to the arcade snowboarding franchise.

EA Montreal trouser-wearer Alain Tascan has admitted there is a lot of love for the SSX snowboarding series at the studio, and said that a revival may be on the cards - particularly if the market (that's you) demands it.

When Nintendo got up on stage at (insert trade show/press conference/railway platform of choice) and told the world it wanted to make gaming simpler and more approachable, somebody at EA clearly wasn't listening. SSX Blur is about as accessible as an Arctic supply station with no doors. Even if you've played all the other SSX games top to bottom and then caught the chairlift back up again, you'll still need to plug around an hour into the tutorials if you want to do anything more complicated than standing up.

It's one of those Wii games that requires the use of both hands. In your left is quality, in your right is a confusing mess. The nunchuk is used to steer your rider down the hill, as you might imagine, but not necessarily in the way you imagine - while the analogue stick can be used for subtle tweaks, the real steering is done by twisting your hand around as though you're leaning into the turns, while jumps are performed by flicking it upward. It's a good system, and after five minutes or so you won't have to think about it at all to get the most from it, which is as it should be. Binding the boost function to the Z-trigger makes sense, too.

On and indeed with the other hand, you're supposed to be doing flips, sideways rotations, ubertricks, bail-outs and even throwing the odd snowball, and this is where things are a bit less helpful. The idea of using hand-gestures to activate tricks isn't a problem, but SSX has always been about doing big combination moves, and here things falter. If we're honest, combination grabs and rotations were always a bit of a button-mash, even on the Dual Shock, but it wasn't all that difficult to inject a bit of variety by clawing for a different combination of shoulder buttons when you leapt off a cliff. On the Wii, that instinctive injection of variety is impossible to achieve, and most of your success will either be down to intense concentration or luck. Grabs, meanwhile, have to be performed in a different phase of the combination - separated by hitting the A button to disengage from a rotation or flip - as they are controlled by slightly awkward contortions of the nunchuk wrist. Prior to landing, you have to press A or B again to straighten up, rather than simply releasing.

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EA has officially unveiled its SSX game for Nintendo Wii, five months after we first heard about it.