EA Skate Review

For years I have been bored and even irritated by the state of the Skateboarding industry in it's regards to video games. They continued to portray us in the worst possible fashion, giving us poorly constructed dialogue, long boring stories, and even the most unimaginable tasks to complete that strayed so far from realism it might as well be called acrobatics instead of skateboarding.

With that said Tony Hawk has not been the only game to enter the skateboarding scene, it would seem a number of titles attempted to emerge in what would be called the monopoly of skateboarding games and attempt to take some of the Hawk throne. Among them were gems like Thrasher skate and destroy, this was a much harder game but at the same time was greatly more rewarding, they used more realistic physics and a sort of trick rewarding that made it so harder tricks were not immediately available. This would be the only good title to come out of skateboarding aside from the early Tony Hawks.

Now we have EA Skate, a game that revolutionizes the controls and physics of skateboarding in a good direction, while some aspects of the game are frustrating, from a skateboarding standpoint it is far more rewarding and enjoyable to sit down and play this game then any of the last few Tony Hawks, and this includes the most recent addition which I have only demo'd mind you and I still feel that EA has done a better job.

With that lets dive into the most obvious difference in this and other skateboarding games: Flickit controls. EA took it upon themselves to completely change the button scheme of skateboarding games by simply, removing the buttons. With the new Flickit controls the buttons and triggers only serve as pushing and grabs, which leaves only the thumbsticks to make your skateboarder and board do everything you want. Taking some of it's influence obiviously from the Tony Hawk Nail the trick, EA decides to make the entire game with the use of the thumbsticks. You have the left thumbstick which controls the skaters movements and direction, then you have the right thumbstick which serves as your goto for all things fliptrick related. This however does have some drawbacks, you are limited to the amount of tricks you are capable of doing, but from an overall perspective you have almost all of the important tricks at your disposal. The only real drawback I found with this game was the grinding, often times krooked grinds would become willy grinds and things like feebles and smiths would be nosegrinds and 5-0s. This is partially the fault of the gamer themselves but the thumbstick is just extremely touchy leaving you feeling very frustrated at some points in the game when you are told to do specific tricks into grinds. The hardest part about these controls is actually doing a trick that you intended to do, 360 flips will become 360 shuv-its, and well just about every trick you try will at sometime just be a shuv-it and damn is that shit annoying... But still the new controls offer a new form of gameplay not yet seen in this entirety in a skateboarding game, so I give it my thumbs-up approval just hopefully the next game does a slightly better job.

Now for the actual gameplay and story-mode aspect of EA Skate. I am going to go ahead and say this right now, if you enjoy this game it's worth buying, if you had fun with the demo then you will enjoy the game. However in the actual story mode aspect of the game you will often be faced with challenges that not only fall far from the realm of reality but will frustrate you to the point of tossing your controller. A game that is so focused on capturing real skateboarding early on strives so far away from it towards the end that your not only dissatisfied but your outright pissed off. While one would expect things like filming challenges to involve doing a good amount of tricks to get a decent score we would hope that the game would focus on smooth landings and clean ride-aways. It doesn't, later on infact you are forced to "Tony Hawk Out" on some of the challenges, but that I mean you have to do like 10 trick combo grinds to get the allowed points and other requirements of that specific filming challenge. The worst part about the gameplay however isn't the difficulty that you are faced with later on, but is the distractions that were placed in the game to make it more realistic, that instead just make you wish that everyone in the imaginary skate world was dead. People constantly get in your way and unlike real skateboarding they don't move, ever, even after you knock them down they remain on the ground and then eventually get back up and get in your way once more. The attention of cars is not so much frustrating but it does suck when you are just trying to cross the street and get hit by a car damn near every-time, you figure all these people doing hit and runs would get in trouble with the law? Lastly the most frustrating aspect of the gameplay, is the set-up time, the fact that you can't just flick the right stick really fast to do a little ollie up a curb or even the fact that olling up a curb will be your worst foe in tis game has to be the most annoying aspect of the gameplay, you will fall... a lot on the dumbest shit.

Man, hear I thought I was going to give this game a good score, but I am kind of reconsidering it now...

Next, the Camera. The developers thought it would be a great idea to give the gamer that fisheye feeling in which you are very closely observing your skateboarder, making you the most important aspect of the game and less the environment. This also translates to the replay editor where you can watch the last 60-90 seconds of gameplay because you are sort of being followed at all times by filmers despite you not being entirely aware of this. This creates a lot of problems in terms of not having a god-damn clue to where you are and what is around you, thus the reason you will get hit by a car or run into people while trying to turn around, you are so visually impaired in this game that you might as well be skating with a blindfold on. With that said an alternate camera view should have been optional and one that allows you to pan your surroundings because navigating the large world can be oftentimes overwhelming and unrewarding when you can't recall a spot you were skating.

The map, the most important tool in the game has to be the map, you will lose it a whole lot, and it can be your portal to challenges, spot locations, and even the metro. What sucks about the map is the inability to mark it and guide your character to a location like say in a GTA game, plus being a skateboarder you like to know where spots are, so the lack of a pin system to mark certain areas that you enjoy skating was extremely disappointing but will hopefully be applied to future titles.

The Soundtrack... sucks, you are plagued with the same like 6 tracks looped over and over again unless you manually set up the playlist to play other music, aside from that for the most part it is rather silent allowing you to enjoy the sound of your skateboard. I personally just turn off their crappy music and either play my own or just listen to the sound the of the board grinding and sliding around :).

Xbox Live is one of the cool features of this game without a doubt, the ability to play online at spots with your friends is a blast, one of my complaints though is the lack of spots and often times the choice of areas to have these spot battles, you would think that areas available in some sections would be in others, like if you are having a Spot battle at the mega ramp, when you go to have a jam session in the same area it decides to put you in a pool? who the hell wants to have a jam in the horrible ass pool? I want to have a jam on the mega ramp and the quarter pipes and the entire Mega Complex which is fire as hell but nooooooooo.... You can also set up rooms and invite your friends and even spectate your friends games and watch them play ect, however for some reason it doesn't seem like you can play with your friends in ranked games, which to me sounds retarded, that or myself and a buddy of mine haven't figured it out, in ranked matches you can gain experience for winning races, spot battles, and for getting the most points in a jam, these experience points help your online status and get you some gamerpoints.

While I admit I didn't cover every aspect of this game, like the fact that transition skating is horrible(now it's covered), for the most part you have a good idea of what this game is all about, and while I was well very harsh I would still play this game any day over the last... 5 Tony Hawk games and unless Tony Hawk turns off the fact that you gain speed when you combo UP a handrail I don't think I will ever play it again. I will continue to play and enjoy EA Skate, but again, if your a skateboarder or a gamer, I don't recommend getting this game for the gamerpoints or for the career mode, just go online or freeskate, it's far more fun that way.

SEVEN OUT OF TEN ------- 7/10