Skate
Skate came out at a pretty perfect time. For me it was weird as it was exactly when I had given up on the Tony Hawk series. I loved Tony Hawk. The original 2 games were great, then 3 felt like just more of the same, 4 changed things up but by 6 I was fed up. I enjoyed American Wasteland quite a bit, but still figured I’d had just about enough.
Skate is the anti Tony Hawk game. It’s a skateboarding title that lives in a world of realistic moves and physics. Gone are the days of skateboarding games where you can chain together 50 moves in a single combo and end up grinding telephone wires to score millions of points.
If you’re wondering why I’m talking so much about Tony Hawk in a Skate review. It’s because Tony Hawk has been the only popular skateboarding franchise to date. There have been some other attempts in the past. Skate or Die, Street Sk8r, Thrasher, etc. But Tony Hawk is the only series that was loved, and later abused with yearly releases.
Skate throws everything we thought about skateboarding games away and starts fresh. The biggest change is to the controls. Instead of button presses to perform moves, Skate uses the right analog stick (like most of EAs newer sports games). The new controls work pretty well. You hold the analog stick down then slide it up to do an ollie. If you time it right you’ll jump higher. Sliding up and to the left or right will do a heelflip or a kickflip. If you slide to the left or right, you’ll do a frontside or backside popshuvit.
To get on a rail, you have to ollie and land onto it, the way your board connects with the rail determines what kind of grind or slide you do. You can use the triggers and right analog stick while in the air to perform different types of grabs as well.
This is where skate really differs from other skateboarding games. It’s really grounded in reality. When you’re in the air you can pull of 2 tricks at the most. You can flip in and out of manuals to chain moves together, but it’s quite difficult to get a long chain going. Rails are also much harder to get onto. You have to approach them at the exact right angle and ollie at the right time to land on it. The controls even make the timing for a simple ollie difficult, you can’t push until the last second and then ollie, and you need to prep for the ollie a second or so. It’s much more realistic skateboarding. You will bail… a lot. You’ll spend a lot of time setting up moves as well. The set up (direction and speed for a trick) is just as important as actually pulling it off.
While I think this is skates biggest strength, it’s also where a feel a lot of gamers will be turned off by skate. Its fun to play around with and tricky to master.
Another feature of Skate that differentiates itself from other games is that it is a large open world. You can skate anywhere; you can ride from one area to the next. There is a subway that can quickly take you around, but if you want to just play around you can skate from one end of the city to the next. This adds for a more free roaming like experience.
Other than those innovations the game follows a typical mission structure. There are live action cutscenes to compliment the story but they are really lame. They feel like poorly produced MTV music videos, and are just trying way to hard to be both funny and extreme. Every time you meet a new skater you’ll get a run down of all the gear they’re using. It’s product placement at it’s finest. To actually play through the game you find skaters who will give you missions that will allow you to progress in the game. You can learn new moves, earn new gear and cash. Some of the missions are lame. Playing a game of HORSE with another skater or having to follow a friend through the city for example, can make for some long boring missions. There are some interesting ones though. Pulling off a specific move and picking a photo from the reply is a neat addition. You are also able to save entire replays and share them with your friends.
All in all, skate is a great skateboarding experience. The cutscenes are lame, the story is boring, and some missions are just not fun. But the overall experience is rewarding. If you want to tackle the new control scheme I suggest trying out this game. It’s better than any of the newer Tony Hawks!
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