Out of these 3 titles skate. takes the top spot. I and many other skateboarders have been waiting for that one true title that would stay true to the sport. Having played Tony Hawks since the second installment in the series, I’ve grown tired of Neversoft always making the game with less and less realism. Tony Hawk’s Underground was and still is the best in the series in my opinion, although I stopped buying the TH-series after American Wasteland. Sure the backflips were a fun addition but nowhere near enough to keep me interested.
At some point videos of skate. begun to emerge. Mostly the videos discussed about the flick-it control system, which naturally made me doubt whether or not the game would manage a good precision control you need for a skateboarding game. Now, well-after the game’s release, I give thanks since the game is near perfect when it comes to the feel of rough concrete against your urethane wheels. Oh, the gloriousness of glory!
After playing the game for at least 200 hours, a lot of bugs have appeared to me, yet they can be easily forgiven. The reviews I saw before skate. came out in Europe (Scandinavia -> Finland) were complaining about the hardships of mastering the control system, which I find highly intuitive. I haven’t had problems with separating a 360 shove-it from a 360 flip. Now, I do understand that they are hard to differentiate, but in fact they are quite very differently executed with the analogue sticks. The very thing that makes skateboarding what it is, is the challenge of learning and vice versa. Skate gives that same feeling as the gameplay revolves around you learning tricks, just like in real life.
Also there were complaints about tricks such as no-comply and boneless etc. missing from the game. Albeit they’ve been important landmarks in the history of skateboarding, but they would hardly carry over to a video game. Modern skateboarding does incorporate these moves sometimes, but in a game like skate, it wouldn’t work quite as well. Sure executing lip tricks could be a bit easier, but the way I’ve now seen how physics can be handled in a skateboarding game, I’m sure with just making the physics even more adaptable with the environment, lip tricks could be done by just using the physics as they are.
Skate however, isn’t all that real, which I think is a good thing. The game allows you to have a lot of fun aside of the closest virtual skateboarding experience yet. Complaints, then? The online-play sucked big time, especially because it didn’t let you explore the whole city with your friends (and of course it was laggy as hell – not that I now how laggy hell is…so what is lag hell, then?). If this hasn’t changed in skate 2, I do hope that a level-editor finds its way in. TH’s level editor was mostly useless, but in skate, I would see it making a difference. Making your own park/locale and skating it with your friends online is the next best thing from a full-scale city.
Closing statements: skate was the best game of 2007. Now I’m buying Halo 3 after a considerable amount of pondering. We’ll see if the multiplayer excuses the depth-lacking (the plot is hardly any good) single-player campaign. I guess I could put up a review but man, would I get a lot of hate-mail if somebody actually read this blog. Good thing nobody does. Right? Right?…Uh oh…
What can I say, FPS is basically the most uninventive genre ever, it mostly contains just shooting. Bioshock made me think twice about FPS-games (I probably would’ve enjoyed System Shock 2), just like Half-Life (BTW Portal is awesome, maybe even better than Bioshock). I guess I’ll see what’s to come.
Me, out.
