skate: Career Mode

Sep 4, 2007

EA's skate is almost here. Shipping September 11, skate hits stores with incredible momentum thanks to a well-received Xbox 360 demo. That demo, however, is just a taste of the robust game offered by EA and developer Blackbox. We've spent more than a dozen hours with skate, exploring the city of San Vanelona and, when the mood struck us, tackling some of the career challenges.

The career mode in skate begins with a horrible accident. You've been hit by a bus and broken just about every part of your body. You're rushed to the hospital, where a crack team of doctors fix you up with a brand new face and body. Before you can leave the hospital and start the road to building your skating legacy, you'll need to design your new look, pick your first board, and choose your attitude towards the world.

As with most EA titles, there is a fairly robust system for body and facial morphing. Though the hair styles and coloring are limited, we were still able to recreate Bill Clinton's younger years and our good friend Jesus (he prefers to be called Chewy). Once you have a happening body, you'll choose your natural stance (normal or goofy), skate style (normal, loose or aggressive), and your gestures (cool, rock, punk). Your style, as far as we could tell, dictates some of the animations. It won't affect your performance, because there are no stats in skate. You play to your own abilities. The gestures work off the d-pad and are a nice way to celebrate a sensational trick or to antagonize a competitor.

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You don't have much cash to begin with, just $325. And you can't go out on the street naked (sorry!). So before you can begin tearing it up in San Vanelona, you need to make a few purchases. These will be your only items until you find a skate shop in the city, so choose carefully. Skaters can outfit themselves in hats from more than 30 different brands, including Girl, Plan B, and Spitfire. The hats, honestly, don't look all that hot, so you may want to pass on covering your dome. Shirts can be purchased from an equally impressive list of companies. There are also 51 shirts from bands, so you can sport your love for Agent Orange or N.W.A. if you don't want to sell out to a corporation. Your choice for pants/shorts are limited and are all generic -- no brand names here. And lastly, perhaps most important, are your kicks. Adidas, Ipath, Nike, and many more have a variety of shoes for purchase. Round things out with a variety of shades, watches, and belts.

Don't waste all your dough on clothing, because you'll also want to buy a new board. Because there are no stats, you don't have to worry about one board offering better grinding ability than the next. Choose a deck, trucks, and wheels that fit your liking. Again, most every major skating brand is included. Lastly, you can tighten or loosen your trucks, which affect turning ability and stability. You can also select the hardness of your wheels, which affects your ability to power slide.

Now you're ready to head into San Vanelona. The intro story about your horrible accident and the videographer who befriends you in the hospital is pretty much where the "story" ends. If you loved the obnoxious story aspects of the last few Tony Hawk games, then you are in for disappointment here. You will find many challenges and meet up with a lot of pro skaters in San Vanelona, but you're spared the annoyance of cheesy story moments.

In skate, your main objective is to ride around the city at your leisure. But if you need structure, there are plenty of career objectives. If you want to go after the career challenges, then your goal in skate is to become famous -- to get in magazines, score some covers, win X-Game gold, and be loved by all. Crucial to this are the two mags in skate offering stardom: Thrasher and Skateboard Mag. There are a number of different challenges, which we'll run through in a moment. But it's important to stress that, while skate has some structure with its escalating difficulty in challenges, it doesn't progress like Tony Hawk. It's a very laid back type of game, and very much unique to the action sports genre. If you skate just for the challenges, you may end up being a bit disappointed. If you skate just to skate, using the challenges as something to push you to learn new tricks, then you'll be more likely to fall in love with this game.

Each magazine offers its own set of challenges. You can choose which ones to go for as you please. Follow the career path to its conclusion with Skateboard Mag, then tackle Thrasher, or bounce around. The two magazines have very different focuses and so do the challenges. Skateboard Mag is a lot more career oriented, and as such, the challenges are a bit more about showing off the technical excellence of skaters. Thrasher is more about the lifestyle and features more offbeat challenges, like scoring a photo of yourself bailing and breaking four bones. Completing challenges for each has two major benefits: You earn sponsors and you unlock several new skate parks otherwise locked to outsiders (this includes Danny Way's skate wonderland).

You can earn sponsors for your board, trucks, wheels, and shoes. A sponsor gives you any of their product for free. And if you sport the sponsor when completing challenges, you earn bonus cash. But be careful which sponsor you choose. We've never found a way to switch sponsorships. So choose sponsors that you're willing to pimp for the long haul. Board sponsorships are unlocked by meeting pros and then completing their challenges. All other sponsors are earned by progressing through the normal set of magazine challenges.

Here are some of the different challenges you'll face in skate:

Photo

Both magazines offer these challenges. Head to the chosen spot and perform the trick the photographer is asking for. That may mean transferring a set of stairs onto a rail in a grind of your choosing, or it may be far more specific -- 360 flip over the stairs, down the hubba. It won't be until you've cleared a good number of these that it really becomes challenging.

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Film

The best challenges in skate are the film challenges. Here you will be given 30 seconds to complete a series of tasks (score 3200 points, do a 45 ft jump, complete three grinds in one run). The thing is, you can do these film challenges anywhere you want. So instead of having a designated area, it's your goal to travel San Vanelona looking for the perfect spot to pull off these sweet video challenges. This forces you to pay attention to your surroundings and rewards those who explore the city.

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Jams

Three or four skaters drop into one area for about two minutes and try to rack up the most points. It can get quite hectic, since every skaters are vying for scores in the same small area. You may have someone drop in on your head or land a sweet Christ Air, hit the bottom of the pool and run smack into someone else, bailing. Hectic, sure, but also a lot of fun.

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S-K-A-T-E

Take on the pros, in a classic game of HORSE. If the pro lands a trick, you have to land the exact same trick and vice versa.

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Death Races

These are straightforward races. Bomb the hills of San Vanelona, dodge traffic, and make it through every checkpoint gate. Don't bail or you will have a tough time crossing the finish line first.

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We'll have more on skate throughout the week, culminating in IGN's exclusive review this Friday.