Review
Release Date: 09.13.2007
Platform:
Xbox 360Developer:
EA CanadaPublisher:
Electronic ArtsReviewed by
Samuel Altersitz on 7.15.2008
It's been a while since a new skateboarding game tried to come along and dethrone the
Tony Hawk series from its title as reigning champion, and sole survivor.
Shaba Games tried a while back, then ended up becoming a developer porting over a
TH game from the PS2 to the PSOne. In 2007 another skateboarding game entered the arena-- this one,
skate.from
Electronic Arts (and yes, the small letter and period are the correct form of the game's title), actually looks like a contender.
As GAF's resident skateboarding game aficionado, I have played
skate. pretty much to death. And it is my pleasure to tell everyone that
skate. is a really good game, an innovative skateboarding simulator and-- with just a few minor tweaks-- possibly the new king of the skateboarding video game genre.
Starting off with the easy things, I'll begin with the visual and aural aspects of
skate. The rest of the game needs a bit more elaboration, so these topics are simple and easily talked about. On the visual side,
skate. is a very nice looking game. The backgrounds are very realistic, the lighting effects from the sun and its reflections are excellent and-- with the exception of the pretty lame looking bail animation of your skater just going limp-- the animations for your skater and his tricks (all motion captured) look fantastic. The sound design is equally impressive with excellent sounds for your wheels on the different surfaces, your trucks and board grinding on different surfaces, and cars and other ambient sounds. The voice acting is successful as well and consists of other skaters who comment on your lines, pedestrians and their phone conversations or conversations with each other (and sometimes comments on you), as well as the real life pro skaters who provided voice talent for the game. The cameraman / commentator of the game is also done well, though he can get annoying at times. The music selection, while a good mix, is something I got tired of pretty quickly and just ripped some mix CDs to my Xbox 360 to play instead. It would have been nice, though, if they let you play your own music through the game, instead of having to use the 360's dashboard to do so. But I skate to goth, industrial, Johnny Cash, Liz Phair and Belly... so what do I know?
Now that that's out of the way, we can move on to the meatier parts of the review.
First off, there is the inevitable comparison to the
Tony Hawk games. At this point in the life of the
TH series, and its complete dominance of the genre, it has to be done. It can, however, be done as succinctly as possible.
Tony Hawk and
skate. are completely different games; different species of the same genus, if you will. The
TH series goes for an arcade style, with outrageous tricks and animations; while
skate. is much more of a simulation, with a focus on realism and skill of the player at the game's core.
One of the most notable elements of
skate. is its revolutionary control scheme. Following in the footsteps of other EA games, like
Fight Night Round 3,
skate. uses a dual analog control scheme almost exclusively. All of your jumps, flip tricks and manuals are controlled solely with the right analog stick. The only buttons used are the A or X buttons to push off (one for each foot), the B button for braking, and the left and right triggers to control each of your hands for grabs (in conjunction with right analog stick movements). That's it for the buttons you use most of the time, though you start challenges with the Y button when prompted, can set session markers with the left bumper and access video challenges with the right bumper. Everything else is dependent upon the direction and speed at which you flick the right analog stick.
EA calls this the "flick-it" style of controls for
skate. And, for most things, this control scheme is absolutely superb. It is very easy to get right into
skate.'s controls and start doing basic tricks-- ollies, nollies, kickflips, heelflips, pop shove-its, manuals and nose manuals. The same for grinding-- nose and tail grinds, nose and tail bones, 5-0 grinds, crooked grinds, blunts and variations of all of the grinds all come easily. It is easy to master the basics and feel like you're an old pro.
Unfortunately, the "flick-it" controls do have some issues. Many of the more advanced flip tricks are very similar in right analog stick motion to other simpler tricks. This causes problems when you mean to pull off a laser flip or a 360 hard flip, and end up doing a pop shove-it instead. In fact, you will probably find yourself doing more pop shove-its than anything else, because the initial movements for the pop shove-its and the advanced tricks are so similar. Eventually the advanced tricks will become slightly easier, but you'll likely continue to do shove-its instead of some advanced tricks you mean to do. This can get quite annoying, especially when you are trying to beat the pro skaters in the S.K.A.T.E. challenges. Manuals may also create problems, as the right analog stick position that performs a manual while your skater is on the ground may not be the correct position to get into a manual when landing. You really have to play the game, religiously, to know exactly where your right analog stick is to get the tricks you want all the time. This kind of dedication might be a bit much for people looking for a pick up and play game.
Also unfavorably, the "flick-it" control scheme doesn't allow for many lip tricks in quarter or half pipes. You might get a nose, tail or truck stall out of it, but that really is about it. No plants or other advanced lip tricks are available. Granted, there aren't all that many pipes in the game, so it isn't much of an issue... but it can be disappointing when you do find those pipes. There are also no finger flips available,which is a disappointment.
Now, the main advantage of the control scheme is the fact that your skater knows how to do all the tricks in the game. There are no stat points to gain or new tricks to learn throughout the game. Your skater is as good as he will ever be. Instead it is you, the player, who will get better at the game. This gives players a real feeling of accomplishment when they do start hitting advanced tricks more regularly, knowing that it is because they have improved. Just check the trick book in your backpack to see how to pull off some of the more advanced tricks and start practicing. The advanced grabs might give you some pause when you see how they are done, but in the end, it is still intuitive.
skate. is also a completely open world game, set in the fictional California city of San Vanelona. Almost the entirety of the game is open to you to skate around in right from the start, with only a few areas needing to be unlocked (skate parks). Along with this goes the more open-ended career mode. In this mode you attempt to get coverage in two of the most well known skateboarding magazines: The Skateboard Mag and Thrasher. In order to get this coverage, you have to complete a series of challenges. These can be video challenges accessed by hitting the right bumper, photo challenges when you find a photographer, or contests and challenges set in specific areas of the map. You do not have to complete every challenge to advance or beat the game, and you can go back and retry previous challenges and complete the challenges you skipped when you have beaten the career mode.
Unfortunately, some of the challenges are just completely frustrating. Infuriatingly so, in a few cases. Certain pro challenges require specific tricks on specific obstacles, certain video challenges are frustratingly difficult in their design (one took me 4 hours of trying it non-stop to finally complete it, mainly due to the right stick positioning for nose manual to flip trick to nose manual required for the challenge)... and if you are an achievement whore, like myself, you will find yourself banging your head against the wall at times. These sort of annoyances make a second play through less desirable, since all you'll really end up changing is your skater's look, stance and sponsors. The annoying challenges made me decide to just skate around on my first career's skater, since purely skating around and trying to perfect trick combinations is still very fun to do.
There is a non-career advancing challenge, as well. San Vanelona has 20 spots to "own" scattered throughout it. Each spot has certain areas you must touch in a line and score a certain amount of points in that line to own the spot. Owning a spot opens it up for multiplayer play in custom online game modes, and also can make you in-game money if you are sponsored when you own it during the career mode. You can also go back and re-own the spots by beating your previous score at each one as many times as you like, thus seeing how you have improved, and earning more sponsor money.
Speaking of sponsors, yes, you get them. As you get more coverage in the career mode, you eventually open up the ability to get a board sponsor, truck sponsor, wheel sponsor and shoe sponsor. Once you are sponsored, you gain additional money for completing challenges based on how many sponsors you have, and if you are using their equipment when you beat the challenge. Getting sponsored also allows you to get any of your sponsors' equipment in the game for free at the skate shops. You can choose to use their equipment or not, however, since not using it won't get you dropped by them.
The design of San Vanelona is very good and conducive to skating around. Lots of nice hills, lots of things to grind (railings, curbs, etc.), and hidden areas give you the feeling of a big city that is basically your own personal playground. To get around the city, you can choose to physically skate to each area, take the subway or use challenge / spot way points when they are open. If you skate from one side of the city to the other, it will take you right around 10 minutes to reach the other end. San Van is a big place. In fact, I'm still finding little nooks and crannies that I had never skated when playing through initially. Exploration is key to finding nice lines.
Now, lines in
skate. aren't like the ones found in the
TH series, which are primarily pre-set lines that you discover and then skate without letting all four wheels touch the ground. In
skate. you stay in a line until your multiplier disappears, no matter where you go while the multiplier is up or if all four wheels touch the ground. The more tricks you do and the higher their score, the longer your line will last. Doing lines also increases the score you get for each trick. The easiest line multiplier to get is a 1.5x multiplier that can be started from the easiest of flip tricks, which increases each trick's points by half its normal value. If you do enough tricks or do enough advanced tricks to get a high enough score in a sequence (a set of tricks without letting all four wheels hit the ground) you can get a 2x or 3x multiplier, which increase your scores by double or triple respectively. To get the multipliers, from a no-multiplier state, you need to get (in a sequence) 100 points for a 1.5x, 400 points for a 2x and 800 points for a 3x; though your current multiplier factors into your point total when attempting a bigger multiplier. Like the
TH series, however, doing the same tricks over and over again in a line lowers their initial point value. So try and mix your tricks up for high scoring lines. The longer you go without doing a trick or the more you repeat tricks the faster your line multiplier will dwindle; so you want to do as many tricks, with as many variations as possible to keep them going. Getting 20,000+ point lines will eventually become relatively easy on the open road or in some of the skate parks once you get the hang of how to keep lines going.
You can also set session markers to help you start a line or goal again if you mess up. Unfortunately, the session markers can cause their own problems in keeping you in the game. Because
skate. uses streaming technology to keep San Van seamlessly loading when skating around, you can sometimes put your session marker at a place that is no longer loaded directly into memory, even though it seems close enough (maybe a few dozen yards or so) and have to sit through a fairly lengthy loading screen to try your line / goal again. Even with the loading screens, session markers can be a godsend when you start a line, a challenge or an in-game video recording from a hard to reach area-- so don't think that the loading screen is much of a deterrent.
EA also decided to give
skate. a community aspect, allowing players to edit and upload in-game recorded footage and snapshots for others to see on skate.Reel. The game automatically holds the last 45 seconds of game play in a buffer (in both single player modes and multiplayer free skate mode), allowing you to hit start and go to the replay editor if you do a sick line or just some amazingly great trick / drop or an insanely funny bail. Unfortuately the streaming aspect can mess with this as well, as I found out editing one of my latest clips. The beginning of the clip was in a part that was no longer loaded-- so when editing the clip, if I moved beyond a certain point on the progress bar, I had to sit through a loading screen before I could continue to edit. However, the overall impact of the skate.Reel community is great.
EA opened up a website,
skate.ea.com, that allows players to share their videos... even with people who do not own the game. The game can convert your edited footage into a flash animation and automatically upload it to your own little personal corner of skate.ea.com. You can host up to three videos and six photos on the website. People with the game can actually view and download your videos and photos right through the game, which is also nice.
The actual editing is pretty basic, allowing five different camera angles, a few video filters and the ability to speed up or slow down the clips. Your uploaded videos can only be 30 seconds in length, maximum, and the game will only allow you to save replays to your hard drive of about the same length (eight videos per skater and 12 photos). You move the left and right sticks to set a highlighted box for what you want to edit and upload, then set markers with the directional pad if you want to change filters, speed or camera angles at different points in the replay. People can also rate your videos and photos either through the website (registration to link your gamertag to the site required to do this), or through their own copy of
skate. Basic or not, there are some great videos on skate.ea.com, and your ability to add to them is a great thing.
skate. also has an online mode, allowing you to play with up to five other people at a time. There are a few different game types, such as spot battle (players attempt to get the highest score while owning a spot), S.K.A.T.E. (like H.O.R.S.E. in basketball, but involving flip tricks while jumping off of something), death race (race through the streets and some back areas) and others. While the online modes can be fun, the game is very sensitive to people with bad connections to
EA's EA Nation servers. Just one bad connection lags the game all to hell and back for
everyone. I'm on a 20 Mb download and 5 Mb upload FiOS connection and when someone with a bad connection joins the game, it becomes very nearly unplayable from the slowdown or constant pausing with the EA Nation box telling you "waiting for skaters" popping up. Also, EA Nation has a bad habit of flat-out dropping you or other players for no reason. You can also be a bit more voyeuristic in your online time, if you wish, by using skate.TV to view friends in free skate mode, or the top ranked players online in the games they are in (as a note, even Xbox Live Silver members can view other games or videos on skate.Reel through skate.TV).
There are some other things that
EA could improve on, as well.
The camera angle in
skate. hovers low to the ground and off to the side of your skater. This angle, while novel in giving you a skate-video-like perspective, can be a complete pain at times. Certain obstacles can cause the camera to swing around wildly-- or worse, go in front of you while you are trying to line up a jump or grind (especially apparent in two online spot battle locations). Your skater also takes up most of the left or right part of the screen (depending on if you are regular or switch stance), and doesn't always go transparent early enough to let you see obstacles in your way. The low camera angle can also make you misjudge distance to and height of rails, causing unnecessary bails. Ironically, when the camera angle does pull back to an overhead and behind view (when being chased by security guards), it actually becomes
worse because of how you've adjusted to the regular camera angle.
Your skater also basically has two useless appendages in the form of his arms. Unless you are grabbing your board, your arms serve no use and the game doesn't let you do simple things like wall pushes or pushing off of trash cans (or pedestrians or parked cars) that might be in your way. Instead you either bump into them and get stuck until you pull back on the left analog stick and then turn, or you bail.
Being forced to pull back on the left stick until your front wheels come off the ground to enable turning when stopped is a huge fault. Many a line has been messed up because your skater bumps a wall or curb and when you push and turn, he just fruitlessly pushes right into the thing he bumped into in the first place... which can cause you to bail... all because he can't turn when stopped unless he leans back to turn.
Your skater also seems to not be able to use his legs unless there is a board beneath at least one of them. Try doing a Christ Air or No Foot Air from an ollie, and watch as you bail from a height of just a few inches, and sometimes break bones. Missing short jumps also causes you to bail, instead of just landing on your feet and not your board. The ability to get off your board to reach areas up stairs or areas too high to ollie to, as well as not slumping over from minor bails, would have been helpful additions, and would have gone a long way towards the realism EA Blackbox was going for.
The bail animations also need a lot of work. Your skater, when he bails, just goes completely limp and then slumps over. It doesn't even seem like rag doll physics at times, as much as you just collapse like a sack of potatoes. Granted, there are times when this works to make
funny bail animation videos. But most of the time it just ends up looking unrealistic.
The biggest thing that needs to be improved upon, however, is the collision system. It is wildly inconsistent. There are times you can barrel full speed into a wall or parked car and barely do more than bump it, yet other times you bail. Then there can be times you barely touch something at extremely slow speeds, and you bail, and bail hard. You can also bail, for no reason, in the middle of the open ground while just coasting. I suppose some speck of dust comes flying at you at incredible speeds, and then sends you literally 20 feet away from your board, spinning around in the air while bailing. A more consistent collision system for bails is extremely necessary.
And, while this doesn't factor into my score, there are some annoying achievements to get, as well. Winning three or six ranked games in a row can be frustrating if you are a new player-- especially in spot battle where
EA stupidly decided to leave the line multiplier active, allowing people who know how to utilize it to get scores that no new player can ever beat. Or, the most annoying one, get 20 people to rate a single online video or photo... an achievement based on hoping
20 other people vote on your footage is as stupid as
Rockstar's "kill a Rockstar developer in a ranked multiplayer game" in
GTA IV achievement. It's not an achievement, it's luck of the draw. Achievements are supposed to be something you, as a player, can achieve by playing the game (even if it takes a while); not something you have to hope and pray for, like winning the lottery. There are quite a few people out there, I am sure, who are stuck at 990 gamerscore on this game simply because their footage isn't rated enough times. I'm one of them.
So, has
skate. got what it takes to become the new king of the skateboarding video game genre? Well, until I play the newest TH game, I can't say for sure. But, I can say that it definitely has a good shot at the title.
skate. is a very good and enjoyable first attempt by
EA. If
skate.2 can fix what needs to be fixed, add a few new things and keep what worked from
skate.... well, Tony Hawk might want to be ready for a fight.
