EA skates on Tony’s turf...
With the Tony Hawk's series so dominant in the skateboard genre since the turn of the century, it's about time a skating rival emerged to challenge for the crown. Enter Skate, EA's answer to the skateboard game, and very much the antidote to the increasingly convoluted button-bashing frenzy which Activision's skating titles have become these days.
Skate takes Tony Hawk's focus on insane stunts, crazy combos and Jackass humour and throws it out of the window, making for a skateboard experience far less extravagant but also much closer to real-life skateboarding.
All about control
In Skate, it's all about the controls; or notably, the relative lack of them. Instead of bombarding players with complications by using the joypad face buttons for tricks, Skate places accelerate and brake on them, while steering your skater and changing their body position falls predictably on the left stick. Yet it's the right stick which is Skate's surprising unique selling point, being your gateway to the jumps and tricks which would normally be spread over several different buttons in a traditional skateboard game.
Pushing down on the right analogue stick in Skate causes your skater to crouch and flicking straight up on the stick then enacts the basic skating jump, an ollie - while pulling different flips of the board (kickflip, heelflip, etc) is a simple case of slightly tilting the analogue, as opposed to pushing it straight up. With grinds done automatically when you land on a grindable surface, and left and right handed board grabs on the left and right triggers, it's a sublimely simple control system that perfectly captures the feel of skating and quite frankly leaves Tony Hawk floundering.
That's not to say Skate will be an easy game, though; especially if the demo on the Xbox Live Marketplace is anything to go by. Indeed, existing Hawk players will find their previous videogame experiences a curse rather than a blessing.
Because Skate's more minimalist control slant brings players much closer to the real skateboard experience than Activision's title, it mimics the frustrations of real-life skateboarding too. Jumps and tricks takes precise timing and bailing will initially happen more often than not, but as you become accustomed to Skate's way of doing things and start putting together full fall-free runs, something clicks and it all feels arguably even more satisfying than any skater sim that's gone before.
Jumps and tricks takes precise timing and bailing will initially happen more often than not.
That said, Skate is far more downplayed than its immediate skateboard rival, with none of Tony Hawk's super tricks, stat building and growing gimmickery. Even the camera in Skate is lower to the ground, giving you the feel that you're actually playing one of those authentic homemade skateboard movies.
In fact, it would not be unfair to say that if Tony Hawk's games are the FIFA of the skating genre, then Skate could be its Pro Evolution Soccer; a less flashy, more realistic and overall purer take on the sport that's less immediately accessible, but real fans will find to mimics their passion much more closely.
Set in San Bancouver - a fictional amalgamation of San Fransisco's hilly terrain, Barcelona's open-plan areas and Vancouver, the home of Skate's development team - Skate's gameworld promises to be a veritable air and grindfest for a career mode which will let you impress the pro skaters and carve a star skateboard career, or go the underground route and become and infamous illegal skate legend. And with an online mode and video replay footage added to the mix, Skate could actually set a new standard of board-based videogame fun.
Preview by: Mark Scott
Preview Published: 31.08.07