skate

Sep 17, 2007

Casual fans forget that Tony Hawk isn't the only name in the world of skateboarding, and EA has decided to pursue some of these other skaters to make a game of its own. Coming to the battle with a roster of top-tier athletes, EA has something truly great on its hands with its first entry, skate. Leading the pack is skating legend Danny Way, and along with names like Paul Rodriguez, Dennis Busenitz, PJ Ladd and Rob Dyrdek, this lineup's surplus of talent, charisma and notoriety should be a huge treat for fans around the globe.

As soon as you lay eyes on the game, you'll notice that it's very different. From the first moments where you find that the intro is on par with the best skateboarding videos, to the stylized visuals and smaller touches, skate quickly becomes a pleasure to play. Whether you're nailing a powerslide or grinding a rail, the inspired soundtrack -- including a wide range of tunes from the likes of N.W.A. and Gang Starr to the Grateful Dead and Black Flag -- provides an excellent aural experience.

The visuals fit perfectly with the game's vibe; an authentic skateboarding experience. Some filters are used on the cameras to provide a bright, vibrant world that is truly beautiful. With exaggerated, vivid environments and thoughtfully laid-out architecture in the fictional city of San Vanelona, the game provides lots of things to look at, and more importantly, to skate on. The skaters you find throughout the game look close to their real-life counterparts, and whether it's Jason Dill's dazed expression or the unique mannerisms found in Ali Boulala's movements, their personalities are faithfully represented. An interesting choice by EA was to keep the camera fairly low, which makes it that much easier to follow the action as the camera is now focused on the board rather than the rider. This adds another facet to the game as you'll be able to witness the nuances and properly represented movements taken when performing different tricks.

As great as the audio and visual presentation is, skate really shines with its control scheme. The new "flickit" system has all of your tricks mapped to the right stick on the controller. You'll have a few of the face buttons to push and the shoulder buttons to do grabs, but the majority of the time will be spent fiddling around with the right stick, and though it sounds bizarre, it's an absolute blast. Gone are the days of pulling off ridiculous combos where you go from a triple heelflip to a revert to a manual out to three pop-shove-its all in one ollie. Here, tricks are based a bit more in the real world, so you'll have to practice some patience as you learn how things work.

The flickit stick is used as an extension to your body, providing a fluid and natural experience for your skating antics. You need to pull the stick down then quickly flick it up to pull off an ollie, whereas for kickflips, you need to push the stick down and up to the right, mimicking the movements your body will go through when actually performing these tricks. Rather than having a button reserved for grinds, you simply need to ollie up and position your board on the rail the proper way, and you'll be riding them to your heart's content.

If you want to do a 50-50 grind, just set your board to be parallel to the surface and you'll be set. If you want to do a bluntslide, just twist your player's body to angle the lip of the deck into the grind and land it. The control is very organic and incredibly deep, requiring a lot of practice before you get everything down, but that's part of the beauty of it. You're not awarded skill points that will affect your attributes as was found in past Tony Hawk titles. Rather, your abilities are reflected in the game by your own skill. Your experience is all based on what you make of it, so players won't necessarily have the same experience and they can potentially have different skill sets.

The game's progress itself is goal-based, so you'll advance by completing tasks. These tasks will help you gain notoriety through magazines like Skateboarding Mag and Thrasher. You'll start the game with simpler challenges like a basic game of S.K.A.T.E. (which is basically H.O.R.S.E.), where you face off against another skater, and though it's initially frustrating and time consuming, it's never tedious. You'll then meet up with pro skaters throughout San Vanelona, completing challenges such as making a blind leap from a giant block to a rail or wallriding down a 50-foot drop without tanking it.

As you complete these goals, you'll eventually unlock special events such as magazine photo shoots, sponsored jam sessions or even an invitation to the X Games, but you'll be able to progress at your leisure, or if these goals aren't for you, you can just spend hours on end scouring the city for the sweet spots to skate like parks, office plazas or even just riding around in an empty pool.

For those of you who enjoy all of these different modes but want to be joined by some good company, skate also offers a decent online mode. You can set up various games like S.K.A.T.E., jam sessions and races, or if you don't feel like competing you can also go into a basic freestyle session. The only problem with the online component is that it's fairly laggy. Your character will control okay throughout the different events, but we noticed that other players were warping around the maps fairly severely.

This quickly became a problem as we were trying to do different tricks only to have another player warp in front of us and knock us down. On top of that, during the jam sessions, we noticed that there were some scorekeeping glitches where our points weren't accurately tallied up. Things like these that will hurt your overall performance and standings during events were a fairly brutal hit, but as you may find that you still have a heck of a time during these games, it's not the end of the world.

With skate, EA has delivered the next step in the evolution of skateboarding games, and though it took a while before we got it, it's been well worth the wait. With its organic controls, beautiful visuals and amazing presentation, it quickly becomes an addicting experience that's tough to stop playing, even during some of the most frustrating parts of the game. Though its online modes slightly tarnish on the experience, the rest of the game more than makes up for it. With everything it has to offer, skate proves to be the best skateboarding game out there, period. We're Sorry Tony, but it's the truth.