#7 - SSX 3 (Kudos to no-one for guessing this)
Considering how much I dislike EA as a company for their business practices, I can't deny that they make some absolutely fantastic games sometimes and SSX 3 is the absolute peak of their brilliance (there's an in-joke in there!)
Genuinely, though, it was a brilliant idea to take the series in a more open-world approach with a 3-peaked mountain which you could explore at your leisure (or at least, the first peak) and the game was what you wanted it to be. Wanted to progress to the top by racing? You could do that. Prefer freestyle trick events? You could pick only them too. It was a stroke of genius and really works well for the game.
Everything is so well designed, too. Tracks have shortcuts and hidden areas all over and they retain the neon look from SSX Tricky which make it undeniably an SSX title. Controls are tight and your character will get more responsive the more money you spend on skill points for them. You can customise the hell out of them making them look nothing like the original character you picked up, by snowboarding to one of the ski lodges hidden all over the mountain.
And the soundtrack is a fantastic example of licenced music done right.
All in all, a brilliant brilliant game that I urge you to try if you haven't already.
