Sanctuary’s Review of EA’s skate. for Playstation 3:

“Tony Hawks has lead the skating game genre since they were around, starting on the Playstation 1 and leading onto Proving Grounds on the PS3, however EA have now released Skate, which by far surpasses Tony Hawks in nearly all areas. The main high point of the game is that it takes away the extremely over the top combo’s you can pull off in Tony Hawk and replaces them with 1 or 2 tricks which take some skill to pull off. This makes the game a lot more satisfying when you get good but also has a pretty steep learning curve.”

Graphics

The first thing you notice about the graphics are that they are clean and clear. This is the pretty much the top thing you need in graphics as it helps separate things instead of blurring everything. The colours are strong and the open city looks very nice apart from a few things. The main thing you’ll notice is that the Antistrophic aliasing (Long distance scenery) has almost entirely been switched off so anything over a distance has jagged lines and is slightly blurred. As you go on you’ll find that the camera angle can also be irritating at times when you really need it. Instead of being in a fixed position to your back, it instead follows your direction. This means that when you are skating along, and do a sharp turn, the camera is lagging behind and you cant see what’s in front of you for a good second at times.It doesn’t sound like much but it can be annoying when you turn sharp and go head first into a piece of scenery or pavement curb. The other, and biggest flaw of the graphics is the forever changing framerate. At times it will play perfectly, go into a part fo the city with alot of lighting or moving objects (people, cars) and the framerate can drop to a stupidly low amount. This can sometimes be unbelievably annoying when you’re trying to pull off a fairly difficult combo only to get slapped in the face by a 30fps drop.

Gameplay

The gameplay feels like it’s been nearly perfected and doesn’t have many flaws, but the flaws it does have can be quite irritating. You ollie (jump) by pulling the right stick down and pushing it up, you high ollie by holding the right stick down and pushing it up. Those are the two moves which are very simple. You get onto harder moves where after you ollie, you pull back again, move the stick a little to the left and then push it to the top right. This mixed with a 520 and then a grind can give you tons of points. The moves don’t sound that difficult but when you have to pull them off in a split second, they are sometimes near impossible until you practise for a week or so which is good if you want a long game. In Tony Hawk, to get points like that, you would have had to ollie into the air, mashed the buttons as quickly as you could and do a ridiculous amount of un realistic moves. Skate focuses more on more singular moves which in all is a lot more rewarding and realistic. The missions in Skate really don’t get repetitive as to speak. They are generally quite challenging and give even the most experienced gamers quite a task. One of the most difficult yet essential moves to master is the “manual”. The manual is where you balance on the 2 back or front wheels of your board and ride along. The manual is mainly used to carry on a trick and do another to continue your chain. For an example, someone might ask you to kick flip to manual, and then kick flip. To manual you have to ollie and then push the right stick up or down and hold it on a certain angle when you land. This angle on the right analogue stick however is very difficult to find and even more difficult to land after a few tricks, this is not a bad thing if you like a challenging game. As for game play flaws, they are mainly lack of missions at one time and the distance between them. When you want to complete one mission then go straight to the next, you must at times travel across an entire city to get to the subway, take the train across the state and then travel on your skateboard across that city. This is very time consuming and for the average gamer, boring. Another large and very annoying flaw is the fact that you cannot get off your board and walk. This really does affect the pace of the game. A good example is when you are trying to climb up a curb and then up some stairs to get a mission. you would instead have to jump up onto the pavement and then find a slope to get to your mission which is again, very time consuming. A good addition to the game is the in game spawns markers. If you set yourself up for a good line to skate and you don’t want to keep skating all the way back and line yourself up again, you can place spawn marker by pressing R1 + down on the dpad. then every time you want to return to that position you can press R1+up on the dpad to respawn back there. This is good if you have found a good jump or your stuck on an irritating mission.

Sound

One of the best and varied examples of sound on a console game yet. Nearly every surface makes a different noise and even grinding he back of your board while in a manual makes an impressive sound. Also the wheels spinning make very subtle changes when you turn and the smoothness of you landings after a trick makes different noises. With a such a varied amount of sounds, this is one of Skates subtle but impressive features. The only let down in terms of sound is the terrible soundtrack with the only two memorable songs being a terrible remix of express yourself and something that sounds like it came from an indian jazz bar.

AI

There’s not really much to speak of. Apart from other skaters, there is no AI, and the AI that there is a beyond humiliating. Sometimes, you will skate into another skater and you’ll both fall off, you’ll then respawn and go forward, but because the AI is bad, the other skater respawns in the same place and goes straight into you again and again and again. However hilarious this is the first 10 times you do it, it gets tedious when your stuck in the middle of trying to do something.

Longetivity

This game, if your patient enough, could last you as long as a Final Fantasy, easily. The wide range of places to go and places to visit will keep you going for hours. With plenty of extras to unlock, including videos, replays, and clothes, you’ll be there for a while unlocking it all. The relatively simple but also difficult moves will keep you practising for hours and mixed with multiplayer, this should be one to buy instead of renting.

Graphics: 7

Gameplay: 7

Sound : 9

AI : N/A

Longetivity: 8

Furin’s Advice

Buy this game if you’re into skating or have ever liked Tony Hawk games. Definite rent even if you’re not into skating. We’re not, and we loved it. Give it some time to get used to the learning curve though. Lots of hard work getting used to doing the different tricks certainly pays off when you get good.

[This game has been reviewed and rated by Sanctuary. The setup on which this review was played is a 32″ Sony Bravia TV running at 720p, connected to a Playstation 3 via Component Cable.]