Skate - First Impressions
When you think about Skate Boarding games you think about Tony Hawk, simply because for years that series has been the leading franchise for pulling gnarly grinds and big air. Problem is for many it’s a partially rose tinted view of things.
Many of us, at least those old enough to do so, remember Tony’s first video game outing with a certain amount of childish glee, and then THPS2 just cemented the Franchises’ home in our hearts. Even when the later titles in the series began to get more and more outlandish we could still see the core of what had been a tremendous game hidden away inside. Many of us even managed to politely look the other way when Tony turned THUG. Really though, like so many things in life we simply should have admitted that, it just wasn’t as good as it was back in the day.
So with the latest install……Oh wait, what? This isn’t a Tony Hawk’s game? Well I’ll be…..
Firing up the demo you’re quite simply given the choice of starting it, no different modes to select no fancy options to play with, just get going. You start in a skate park (of all places) with a voice over introducing you to the basics. Now here is where you get your first real taste that this is a very different game. First up you need to know how to get going, and the voice over helpfully informs you that pressing the X or A buttons will see your skater push off with his foot and start the board rolling, three pushes and you’ll be up to full speed (wait I actually have to press something to move? I don’t just hold forward? Huh, go figure!). In addition the left stick controls the weight of you skater on the board, so moving left and right is done by making your skater lean in that direction.
Once you have figured out the basics of movement you can start to spend time getting your board in the air. By moving the right analogue stick. Moving the stick downwards will see your skater crouch, flicking back up again will perform an ollie, the longer you hold it down the further they will crouch and the bigger kick you get. From this you progress onto various other small tricks moving the analogue stick in a variety of different ways will see you pull out nollie’s, kick flips and shove it’s. At first this feels completely alien, as someone who has spent a number of years using button press combinations to perform insane trick combos this had my brain going in all the wrong directions. Five minutes later however and you wonder how it could ever have been done any other way. It feels like you are actually having to do something to make things happen, and the feeling when you get something right is one of real achievement.
With the basics nailed you can start to get more from your airtime, by pulling the left or right triggers your skater will grab the board with their left or right hand respectively, and by pushing the left analogue stick (and therefore shifting your weight) your skater will spin whilst in the air. Using the right stick will now perform a ‘tweak’ and increase the variety of trick you can perform.
The beauty here is how it all feels, it really does feel like you are making things happen, you need to learn how to do different tricks, not just assign then to a button, you have to work for the elaborate combination and not just be quick on the combo presses. Essentially by making a control system more complicated the devs have successfully made it both more intuitive and rewarding.
Questions of course still remain on how this pans out over a full game, there are a wealth of additional features that all suggest they can keep this title interesting for a good long time, the ability to record skate videos of your run cutting and editing them and then sharing them up on-line being a big point of interest. However with the Tony hawks titles it was always once you progressed through the game and your skaters stats increased that things started to get a little crazy.
However right now from what I have seen, this looks a promising title, hopefully we finally have a viable alternative to the Hawk series.
Posted by Mr-J - August 29th, 2007 -
June 6th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
Skate is way better than the hawk series but it does get pretty tedious quick. Its fun though for the first few weeks. good in the winter when you cant go out and skate.