skate. I never had much hope for skate.. Bringing a new skateboard franchise into the games industry is kind of like trying to compete with Call of Duty' s (former) stranglehold on the World War II genre. However, I give every game a fair chance, and tried to head into the demo with a level head and a clean slate. I tried to like what I saw, but, simple fact is, for every one thing that skate does right, Tony Hawk does two better.
Graphics The word of the day today, is bland. The menus were different enough to be attractive. I found them similar in atmosphere to DiRT. As much as I like the menu though, it' s the game that matters, and the environment you play in is rather hodgepodge. Random bowls, rails and small curbs litter the skate park, with nothing ever really sticking out as somewhere you would like to spend time in. Abysmal textures are poorly covered up by (admittedly decent) heavy lighting effects, and this weird looking grubby filter that stands out in the shadows. The character models themselves, while clean, really aren' t anything to write home about.
Your character' s animations while skating are fine, but then you stop for a moment and realise that he looks like he' s wearing an invisible down jacket. Your arms sit akwardly on your body, and you primarily make any movement from your hips. Lack of decent upper-body movement... bad choice for a game where you spend all of your time focusing on your character.
Sound If I have to hear a guy with a New York accent say " Yo" , " Dude" , " Sick" , or " Dope" one more time, just...promise me you' ll all write me in prison every so often, because somebody' s going to die. I' m not sure if it' s a pro skater they got do do the monologue, but you can clearly tell that the script was written by a someone who' s never been to a skate park in their life. It' s my personal opinion they got most of their script' s reference material from " Rocket Power" .
Well... at least they didn' t say radical.
The soundtrack is 100% forgettable, with bands I' d never heard of performing songs I never really want to hear again. Although, in skate.' s defense, most extreme sports games have rather horrible soundtracks, making your own custom music a necessity for this title.
If you ever hear me compliment skate. on something, it' ll most likely be the in-game audio. The in game itself sounds suprisingly good, especially considering it' s underwhelming performance in the other areas. If this game beats out the Tony Hawk series in one regard, it' s how you sound when you skateboard. Your board rattles across the slabs of pavement realistically, and makes all the right noises when you jump & land. I have no complaints here.
Gameplay Remember them saying that they " were making a different sort of game than Tony Hawk, and don' t want to be directly compared to it?"
Yeah, well... when they say that, what they really mean is, " We' re making a skating game, and don' t want to be criticized for turning out an inferior product with the same features."
It' s arguable that the game provides a " different" aspect of skating. You won' t find yourself grinding along power-lines and doing triple backflips out of swimming pools. The title provides a more realistic take on what skateboarding is really like. Setting up your trick, finding the right place to do it, and then executing for maximum points. Not that hard right?
Wrong.
Even last generation, I had become very accustomed to being able to control my camera, at least in some small degree. This is not so in skate. . Your camera constantly floats about a foot from the ground, 3 feet behind you, and alternates looking from your left and your right side, depending on where you happen to be turning in game. Oh, and did I mention? It shakes... a lot. Kind of like a skate video, only less functional, and far more irritating. Setting yourself up to grind a rail is an arduous task involving about 5 re-do' s, and a plea to God himself for a different perspective, and even then you need to hit it just right. If you could only move your camera maybe a foot up, to get some depth-perception
at all, I would begin to stop hating it.
At the end of the day though, skate. doesn' t bring anything new to the table in the gameplay department. You still have the option of free-skating around the park. If you' re so inclined, you can get somebody to take pictures of you doing tricks (Curiously similar to the game they' re trying to distance themselves from), and if you' re really masochistic, you can talk to " P-Rod" (apparently some skating idol) who will make you watch a half a minute advertisment for his Nike shoes, Plan-B brand board, and Hubba wheels before having you undertake a " follow-the-leader" style romp around the park, where you perform the same simple trick inside of green boxes to complete the mission.
Epic fail on that " distancing" thing guys... epic fail.
Controls Simple, straightforward and effective. Not much to dwell on here. You control your boarder with the left thumbstick, and your tricks with the right. Apart from a couple of grab, push & brake buttons, that' s the gist of it. Their effectiveness is limited (like I said) earlier though, by the poor camera angle.
Final Impression? I suppose if you' re really in to skating games, or have a thing for EA, you' ll find something worthwhile in this title. I would make a rental out of it, except for the fact that I' m positive it' ll be overshadowed by bigger, better and more impressive games worthy of my money. Namely, Tony Hawk' s Proving Ground.
It might not be totally fair to keep comparing it to a decade-old bestselling franchise with a stranglehold on that portion of the market. However, they knew the odds going in to it, & they turned out (what I feel) is a subpar experience. Unless they pull a miraculous Motorstorm-esque turnaround out of nowhere, I' ll pass on this one.
(Impressions on Blazing Angels 2 when I feel like it
)
< Message edited by eddie_the_hated -- 22 Aug 07 18:37:38 >