skating With Style

With the upcoming release of skate 3, I thought it apt to add a previously unreleased skate 2 review. So stop pretending you can actually skateboard, BECAUSE YOU CAN'T.

The skate series (lack of capitalisation not being a typo but a move on EA’s part to make them look "hip") has been one that’s had my attention for quite some time. I played the original a few months back and today went to my local video store, at which the sequel was about the only decent game on their shelves.

The most noticeable and useful new feature is your character’s amazing reality-warping ability to get off his board. I always wondered why this wasn’t included in the first game, since certain areas, one of which was a spot, contained stairways, and no other clear alternative for how to get to the top of them. While you’re off your board, you can now grab and move objects around the environment at your leisure to give you bigger air, or a longer grind, but unless you’re planning to try and hit a high score on every single object you can find you can get through the game using it very little. Points where you are actually required to use this ability will be accompanied with a small elf voicing his concern, informing you that "this stunt would be perfectly possible if only you had a ramp."

In addition to actual skating, you also have the ability to damage yourself in the most unimaginably painful ways possible. This feature was in the original skate, only now you get paid for self-harming, giving you more reason to throw yourself in front of speeding cars, and with an all-new face-smashing physics engine, you can watch your little ragdoll do various somersaults before every bone in his body is shattered on a concrete floor.

One thing I automatically associate skate with is a ridiculous amount of frustration, and that hasn’t changed in its sequel, and the difficulty curve can be rather erratic. For example, very near the beginning of the game I had an objective to do three different flip tricks over a flight of stairs. This was easy enough, and was followed by doing three different grinds along the same rail, which was also frighteningly basic. I was then asked to jump off a cliff onto a huge ramp which would propel me into a skatepark where I had to beat a pro skater at his own game, whilst also getting to a certain point before he did. After numerous attempts (most of which ended when I landed a little off when I hit the ramp) I managed to beat him by about seven points, at which point the game decided to tell me “It’s actually best of three”, at which point I decided I should try another challenge.

Skate 2 does try to remove a much more minor element of frustration from the first game by adding a character called Big Black, who is exactly that, and will fend off guards while you destroy their property. EA overlooked this a little however, and didn’t realise that, although huge, can only hold back a single guard at a time, so upon calling him to test this feature, I still had three guards chasing me down a high street.

If you want a player-friendly game then this certainly isn’t for you. If you want NPC-friendly, however, this is definitely a match made in heaven, because EA seem to love putting mindless aimless pedestrians at totally pointless places, like bus stops where there is no hope of them ever getting to where they want to go. Instead, they just lurk, and get in your way, when you’re trying to own some spots. And if that isn’t enough, when you eventually get around to owning the spot, as its know, the game will say “Well, I guess that just isn’t good enough” and ask you to “kill” it, by setting an unreasonably high score for the average player. It takes long enough to own them when three perfectly English women asking for change for a dollar are stood between the two obstacles you need to gap, and your frustration is only heightened when another skater about the same age as you completes his line perfectly, lands it, and rides off, smug.

To conclude, if you liked the first skate, it’s probably advisable to get this one, since there are obvious improvements, but they’re only making better what was already good. The problems of the first game don’t seem to have been ironed out properly, and I think maybe they should’ve focused a little more on their difficulty curve and player annoyance levels. Oh well, at least we can relieve stress and get paid for self harm. Hurray for jumping off dams!