As you walk around the streets of a city you seldom give stuff more than a glance. A garbage can? Who cares, right? That rail going from the library doors all the way down to the street? Hardly of any importance. But through the eyes of a skater, each of these mundane objects presents an obstacle that can and usually will be used to perform some sort of mad trick. Through the eyes of a skater nothing is just an object and the world has different look to it. Through the eyes of a skater you are free and nothing in this world can stop you…

Jackass lite

…except perhaps for car running you over. Which is exactly what happens right at the start of the game. After watching a rather long FMV cinematic featuring several oddball guys who try to get your faceless character to a hospital you are presented with several options regarding your look. Going by what the intro tells you, you are apparently suffering from memory loss and are in need of some serious plastic surgery to make you presentable. Getting a new nose hardly seems important after barely surviving an accident, but at least the authors made the effort of tying in the character creation process with why your character can skate right off the bat (which seems to indicate that your memory loss is rather selective).

So, after creating a character that closely resembles you (or not, doesn’t really matter) you are thrown into the streets of San Vanelona, a fictional town that combines all of the major features of cities like Los Angeles of New York. You have your standard suburbs, an old district, downtown and the mandatory artsy, high class business district. Each of the districts comes with a unique look (well duh!) but more importantly, with a very specific layout. The suburbs for example are pretty flat and feature locales like an elementary school (loads of tables for you to grind and jump over) and a hospital. The old town district on the other hand is riddled with narrow alleys and long, steep roads which are just asking to be used to gain momentum.

In the main campaign/story mode you’ll be working your way up to fame by performing challenges posed by real life skating pros and doing photo/video sessions with various photographers. Rise up the ranks enough and you’ll get a chance to be featured in magazines, be sponsored by real life skating companies and more. Obviously it is all just an excuse to compete in increasingly more difficult competitions (or rather, in competitions with more challenging opposition).

A different take on skating

If this were a Tony Hawk skating game the town of San Vanelona would be a very boring, dull place. Compared to what we saw in the latest Tony Hawk games skate. offers hardly any ramps, tubes and other skating related objects. But believe it or not, that is not a bad thing. You see, unlike Tony Hawk games where you spend a lot of time in the air, chaining together long trick combos this game doesn’t put as much emphasis on doing all kinds of unbelievable tricks while flying 20 feet above the ground. Instead, you’ll spend most of the time trying to GET into the air and then doing your best to land safely.

On paper that doesn’t sound like much fun or challenging for that matter, but that’s only because you are imagining playing this game with the Tony Hawk control scheme. Over there jumping is a matter of pressing a button, as is performing a trick. In skate. however things aren’t as simple. Just getting your skateboard of the ground requires you to flick the right analog stick down and up (for an ollie or the other way around for a nollie). It doesn’t end there either – kickflips are performed much like a regular jump, but instead of moving the pad vertically you have to flick it diagonally after preparing for the jump. You can get really creative here, since the direction you pull the pad to as well as the direction you then push it into affect the trick that will performed. The easy ones only require you to pull and push, while some of the more advanced tricks have you slide the stick around before pushing it away/pulling it towards yourself.

All this work and you barely jumped into the air – you must think that it takes a rocket scientist to perform stuff in the air. Well, not really, since like real life skating most of the work goes into jumping and landing – the air stuff is mostly just fluff (hopefully no angry skaters will come after me because of what I just said). As such you only use the left and right trigger keys to grab your board. When holding it the right analog stick dictates what kind of trick you will perform, but luckily it is only a matter of holding it in a certain direction. While the right stick controls the board in these grab maneuvers the left one lets you move the skaters body around. If you time things right you can perform 360° jumps or even vertical turns. It takes practice and your skater would be long dead by the time you’ll actually start pulling off good air tricks, but the pride you will feel when you pull it off is worth it.

All the tricks in the world won’t do you much good if you are standing in place however. In order to perform any trick at all you are going to need momentum (or in layman terms – speed). Just like with the rest of the game you’ll actually have to work to maintain a reasonable speed. Pressing the X or A button will make your skater push himself forward with the left of right foot. It is up to you to keep holding the button down (or quickly pressing it for shorter pushes) until you are happy with your speed. Keep in mind however that unless you are riding down a slope it won’t take long before you slow down to a snail’s pace.

If you are keeping a list of what a skating game must include you are probably wondering how grinding is handled here. Well, this is probably the only part of the game that is easier to pull off than in Tony Hawk games. It is just a matter of jumping onto a ledge/rail and land on it with your board. The game will take care of the rest. You still retain control of your body and skate during these grinds, so you can easily kickflip into another grind or off the rail at any moment. And unlike in Tony Hawk games you don’t have to worry about losing balance – as long as you have the necessary speed you’re set.

Fish eye

When starting skate. you’ll probably feel that there is something wrong with the camera. For one thing it is positioned remarkably low, only a few feet above the ground. As a result your skater takes up a good portion of the screen, though admittedly he grows transparent at higher speeds to help you see what is behind (in front of) him. The second thing that will probably bother you (at least at first) is the fish eye lens the game camera simulates. It is hardly noticeable towards the center of the screen, but at the edges the distortion is quite apparent. I’m still not too fond of it, but I have to admit that it gives the game a more realistic feel, as well as giving a greater sense of speed when cruising around the town.

And what a town San Vanelona is. Going by how long it took me to explore most of it I’d say it is roughly two times larger than anything ever seen in a skating game. Not to mention how much more detailed it is – the texture work is amazing for a game of this scope, as are all the tiny details found on the various objects found around. And the pedestrians and traffic, can’t forget those. You’ll probably cause more traffic accidents here than in any other game, though unfortunately you’ll be the only one suffering any consequences. On the sidewalks things get reversed – you’ll be the nasty punk running over everybody (well, almost everybody – security guards tend to kick your ass and then fine you). In fact, perhaps the worst looking part of skate are the trees, which have that nasty pre-2005 sprite look to them.

Ugly trees are not the game’s biggest issue however. Much like the early Tony Hawk games skate. doesn’t let you step off your skateboard. As a result pretty much any type of stairs ends up being an insurmountable obstacle, forcing you to find a different path towards your destination. In a similar vein it would have been nice to be able to simply drive onto sidewalks instead of jumping onto them manually. You see, for all the automatic balancing and nice physics this game offers, you’ll fly off your skateboard the second it hits something. While this makes sense when jumping over a wall and hitting the edge of it with the skateboard it is hardly a sound design decision to maim the player every time he forgets to jump onto a sidewalk.

The presentation of the game as a whole is just mind blowing. I’ve already mentioned the good graphics and physics, but even those two pale in comparison to the stylish menus and great sound effects. The menus look like something taken straight out of an MTV show and really make you feel like you are a part of the skating culture. The same goes for all the environmental effects which sound amazingly real. Not to mention the very good soundtrack, featuring bands like Nirvana, Motorhead and Skid Row. To top it off you can always listen to custom soundtracks if you are playing the game on the Xbox360.

Conclusion

It took almost a decade for a good challenger to the Tony Hawk series to appear. In a way skate. is what skating games should have been from the beginning. It doesn’t let you jump 30 feet into the air and the tricks you perform aren’t as spectacular as the stuff you see in Tony Hawk games. Instead, you work your butt for every trick performed and feel a certain pride after landing a good air grab. Even linking tricks together with manuals (achieved by pressing the right analog stick halfway forwards or backwards) feels more realistic, not to mention the fact that skater and skate aren’t a uniform object here. If you never skated before, but are dying to try it out without risking injuries skate. is just the game for you. Just don’t expect to be skating like a pro from the beginning.