Skate

"The best skateboarding game so far this-gen, but could still be improved to make it even better."

Who didn't enjoy the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games that were released on the original Playstation and, for a brief period, the Playstation 2? The series alone probably got more people into the sport itself. After the third game, it seemed to me like the series was running out of new ideas to keep the game fresh and unique with each release, so they continued to add more and more things that weren't really necessarily to a skateboarding game. Anyway, enough about the Tony Hawk series. skate is EA's answer to rejuvenate skateboarding in video gaming and beat the Tony Hawk games along the way. How well does it fare? Find out what I think in this review.

Graphics
One of the things that really adds to the experience in skate is the graphics. As it's a free-roaming game, you don't expect the city of San Vanelona to look too great but it does actually look pretty good. From the tall industrial buildings in Downtown to the cathedral in Old Town, it is all very well done.

The characters I have no real complaints with. The pedestrians look OK and normally in a game with an open world they have the lowest textures in the game to prevent any lag or drop in FPS. The real business comes with the skaters. I have mixed feelings about this. When you start out your character at the character creation screen, you don't really have much options to choose from. There are about 10 different hairstyles and only a few look actually decent. The other things such as how you structure your face, body, color of skin etc, are fine I guess, but I really think they could have given more options. More hairstyles is one.. How about something like tattoos too? This is one of the things that could be improved and give the player a lot more options to customize their character to make him even more unique. Also, there is no option to make your skater female, despite there actually being female skaters in the game.

On topic of character creation, you can customize your character with all sorts of clothing such as t-shirts (three different sizes - large, normal and really short sleeved), jeans and shoes. All of these are fine however I was really disappointed with the hats. You are limited to just the one style (straight), instead of slanted, sideways, backwards, etc. To make matters worse, the hats mostly all look terrible on your character, like they are balancing on the tip of your head instead of you naturally wearing it. It just seems that some options leave you limited which is a shame. It also brings me onto my next point.

The pro skaters all look great and very well detailed, which makes sense seeing as they have been modelled directly into the game and are the main characters. Still though, they wear the clothes that you can unlock in game and wear, so why can't you actually LOOK like a pro? After quite a while playing with the pros in Freeskate, they just look a lot more natural than any skater you can create. Maybe it's the facial textures, but it really shouldn't be. I would be a lot more proud of my skater if he actually looked decent compared to the pros. Instead, he looks off. The hats I mentioned earlier look much better on the pros than they do on yourself (some also have them slanted, an option which you can't make use of). Character creation is something I would really much like to see EA improve on greatly if a sequel is in the works.

Sound
I'll start this section off by talking about the soundtrack. It's a deep soundtrack and features bands such as Slayer, Agent Orange, NWA and Band of Horses. There is quite a variety in the music but it's generally between rock and rap. As a bonus, you can create your own playlists so if you don't like any songs, you can create a playlist from the songs you do like and just listen to that playlist while you play. It's a great feature because the music actually plays a big role in the game. Without it, the environment would be pretty flat. It's interesting to skate to different kinds of music, each one adding something different depending on the situation. There are quite a lot of songs in the game, including some done exclusively for the game. The soundtrack is one of the positives about skate.

That's really all there is to talk about in regards to the sound of the game. There are sound effects of course, which work just as they should. Grinding down a rail, bumping into a car, even the sickening sound of hearing your head crash into the solid pavement after bailing. I have no real complaints about the sound in skate, I think the soundtrack was especially great.

Gameplay
One of the revolutionary aspects of skate is the new control system, the 'Flick-it' controls. Instead of weirdly pressing buttons to do tricks like in the Tony Hawk games, you pull off tricks a lot more realistically in skate. The left stick controls your body and the right stick your board. Pressing the right stick down then moving it up will perform an Ollie. Pressing it up and then down and you'll do a Nollie. When you first jump into the game it seems tricky, that's because it is. It takes time to master, some of the advanced tricks are really hard to pull off. The general feeling is that the character you play already knows the tricks, it's up to you as the player to master them. It's a pretty neat learning curve because it makes you into that better player. The left and right triggers are used to grab your board, representing each hand. It works really well - mixing and matching can come up with great results where you may even surprise yourself with what you do. It's just a delight to play and see yourself perform some really nice tricks. It's not unrealistic like the Tony Hawk games, you actually feel you've achieved something by doing the hard tricks.

The controls wouldn't mean a thing if the tricks didn't work well with it. Thankfully they do. There are a lot of tricks you can perform. When you start your character out you can choose between Regular or Goofy stance. Regular is when you place your right foot at the back of the board and Goofy is when you place your left foot at the back of the board. Depending on what you pick, tricks are done in the opposite direction. For example, if you're Regular and perform a trick by moving the right stick to the top and then to the left, a skater in Goofy would have to move it to the top but then to left instead. Each trick has a Regular and Goofy variant. It is a great feeling when you are trying to master a certain trick and you finally pull it off, or when you perform it flawlessly and then turn into a combo such as an advanced trick to a nice grind. This is a trick system that really works perfectly well - EA got it spot on.

When you start out your skater and enter Career mode, there will be quite a lot of different challenges open to you. These include photo challenges where you normally need to jump over a certain obstacle and your photographer will take snap shots of the trick you perform. Film challenges are where you have certain objectives to reach in a 30 second time limit, such as do a fliptrick to a grind and earn a set number of points. There's also a mode called S.K.A.T.E where you and another skater battle it out and try and catch the other one out. One performs a trick on a certain locations and the other has to copy that exact trick or he will lose a letter. Lose all the letters and the other player wins. Aside from these, there's also things like Jam in which you and a few other skaters participate in an area and see who gets the most cumulative points, or who can get the most points in one line (eg. a fliptrick to a grind to a fliptrick).

One of the main features of the game is that you can get sponsors - just like in real life. As you work your way up and gain coverage, more and more sponsors will want to sponsor you as a skater. You can choose a sponsor for your deck, shoes, wheels and trucks. Now at first this sounds really exciting and it is. Once you choose a sponsor, say for your deck, you will be able to use their items freely. This not only includes the decks, obviously, but stuff like t-shirts and hats. There's an awful lot of variety in the items and many sponsors to choose from and it's one of the great features of skate. One of my disappointments, however, is that you are not really punished for not using your sponsor's items. You only miss out on the extra money you get from challenges. The money eventually becomes useless because you will have more than enough left over, not to mention using all of the free stuff from your sponsors too. I would have liked a more deeper sponsor system. Say if you stop going along with your sponsor, they will eventually disband from you and you will have to choose another. I'm sure this is how it is in real life. If your sponsor is unhappy with you, they would eventually drop you - not continue to ride with you. Hopefully this could be one of the new features in a possible sequel.

There are four districts that make up the city - Suburbs, The Res, Downtown and Old Town. Each one is different in style and so offers many spots to skate in. Suburbs is home to such places like the elementary school, hospital community center. The Res has a lot of steep hills. Downtown is basically what it says on the tin and is the richest area, the game advertises it as the best place for grinding rails. Old Town has places like the cathedral and has a lot of stone-patterned pavements. It will take you quite a while to navigate the whole map and it's interesting to find all kinds of new spots to skate.

Speaking of spots, the game has 20 special spots which you need to "own". Some of these include jumping from a parking garage to the roof, grinding down long rails, etc. You need to meet a certain number of points to "own" that spot. When you first arrive at a spot there will be arrows above the areas that you need to skate to hit those points. You have a "backpack" in-game which is basically like an options menu. You can view the map here, trick book (which tells you how to do all tricks, grinds and flips, which you've done and not done and how successful you are at them). On the same topic of spots, there's the "Spot Bible" which contains all your information on the 20 special spots around San Vanelona. Once you find a spot, it will be added to the spot bible and also store your score if you "own" it. Also when you "own" a spot, it will be unlocked to use outside of Career with other players.

That's not to say there aren't any flaws with the gameplay, because there is. Due to you being glued to your skateboard all the time it can be more difficult than necessary to navigate certain areas. At times you will find yourself pushing up a steep hill or trying to get up a set of stairs so you can grind that rail. One of the things that would make the game better would be the ability to get off your board and walk or run around. It would be so much easier to walk up a set of stairs, set your board down and set your marker, then do your skating thing. Not to mention realistic. Was our character punished or something? Seriously, having your feet permanently glued to a skateboard, that can't be good.

Another negative is that the camera can become slightly annoying at times. At times you will find yourself itching yourself because you can't set up the camera the way you exactly want it. When you get close in to your character, he will usually go transparent as well. There has been a few hopefuls for a new camera in a possible sequel but I don't think the camera is that much of a problem. The camera sets itself up as an actual skating camera and adds a lot to the game. If you go to a no-skate zone in the game and are chased by a security guard, the camera will change to a far distant one to allow you to see behind you. I don't particular like this camera, and that is probably one of the camera angles some people would want. I just feel if you take away the camera in skate, you are taking away a chunk of the game and excitement. Yes, it can be tricky at times, but no so much to make you hate it.

Story
Yes, believe it or not, there is somewhat of a story to this game. When you first start the game, you are greeted to an introduction movie which shows a skater (or, you) doing a trick or two and then grinding down a rail onto the road. Unfortunately, straight into a bus. You are then fixed up in hospital and choose how you look and what kind of skater you are right then and there. I don't really see the point in doing this, just a quick dash to the character creation screen would have been fine. However, another purpose of this was probably to introduce you to the pro skaters featured in the game. It's unfortunate however that you can't skip this intro, you have to sit through it. The whole game is about building up your rep as a skater and trying to reach pro, earning coverage in skateboard magazines while you progress.

Multiplayer
I was going to add this to the gameplay section but I feel that my current gameplay section is a bit too long and overdrawn, so I will add it to here instead. It does come into the category of multiplayer, somewhat. It's about the skate.reel, which is basically where you can save a photo or replay and upload it to EA for others to see. This can be anything you want, from a perfect trick that you've been dying to hit for weeks, or a really sick bail. There's a lot of content on the skate.reel and you can certainly waste a fair amount of time watching other peoples' videos and looking at their photos. One of the points I haven't touched on is the replay editor, which is specifically useful if you want to upload great footage, as it offers 5 different camera angles and the ability to slow or speed up your footage. You can really get it how you want it.

As for the multiplayer part of the game itself, I wouldn't say it's great but it's not bad either. Many of the games I have participated in usually have a bit of lag and quite a few sessions being disconnected, but you can certainly spend a lot of time on it and enjoy it. There are trick events and race events to participate in - up to 5 players. Trick events contain the usual Jam (who can get the most points), Spot Battle (who can get the most points on a single spot) and S.K.A.T.E. In race events you have the Deathrace and Spot Race. Both feature you skating at high speeds and through checkpoints to see who reaches the finish the fastest, but Spot Race is different in that you have to do tricks as you go through the race.

Altogether, with the game modes to choose from and skate.reel, skate's multiplayer is pretty strong but it would be even better if the technical problems were sorted out and less frequent. You can also track your stats online as well which is fairly deep, with Amateur, Pro and Icon ranks for both trick and race events. You can track your number of wins, how many of each event you have played, and also the leaderboards to find out how you stack up against the entire skate community.

Replayability
It's not a very long game if you count the main challenges, but you will have the most fun in skate when you beat the learning curve and start pulling off some really nice tricks and then turning them into great combo lines. For me personally, I have created about 7 different skaters just because I enjoyed the game and completing the various challenges, and also to get different sponsors along the way. If you like the game as well you'll probably find yourself doing this. Most people I would assume however just end up with the one skater and spend most of the time skating freely around San Vanelona, which is very fun too, taking footage while you do it. If you do eventually get bored of the single player game, there is always the multiplayer too.

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In summary, if you like skateboarding, this will be the ultimate game for you, or if you liked the old Tony Hawk games. Actually, I would bet that even if you don't particularly like skateboarding, it's still a strong sports title which you'll have some fun with, though you do need some basic knowledge of skateboarding (such as the differences between regular/goofy, frontside/backside, etc) to not get too stuck on some challenges. You can easily find that out with a quick internet search. I had great fun with skate, but I still feel it could be improved to make it even better and I hope EA do come up with a sequel. I just hope they don't go along the Tony Hawk route and try and add new and pointless content to keep the game "fresh" and "unique". If there is a possible sequel, I would be hoping for some of the things I addressed in this review to be considered, such as a better character creation system, a deeper sponsor system, along with the usual new pros, new sponsors and items and locations. There's a lot of potential here - EA have started skate with a bang, let's hope they can keep the ball rolling and put the Tony Hawk games to shame.
Overall: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/07/08

Game Release: Skate (EU, 09/28/07)