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Saturday 9 February, 2008
GAMEPLAY
After a trick competition in which I dominated after a random flick of the thumb into balancing down a sloping stair rail, I was given access to more clothes for my character (which didn’t make as big as a difference as I thought) and a sponsorship. This sponsorship directed me to learn the disappointing vert-skating features included the game. The gravity was flawed on vert skating, and the overall presentation of how to gain speed and grab moves (used with the trigger and, yes, tweaking of the analog stick)was horribly explained and hard to do once. This led me to believe skate. was more directed for street skating and linking lines together, instead of what you’d be able to do in the air with two analog sticks.
I guess the game made up for it’s flawed vert system with difficult tilt of the analog stick to perform a manual, to be able to link up longer combos. But despite including almost every mainstream skating maneuver, the game lacks through exploration. There would be times when I would find myself caught at an obstacle because I’d have to ollie up every step and sidewalk curb that could easily be avoided with walking. This was how the game quickly became frustrating, along with nothing new introduced to the game, after you learn all the basic tricks and traveled through each area of the city (Suburbs, Downtown, etc.). The game felt boring after the repetitive competitions and challenges, and honestly, most of the challenges were pretty hard and were only completed through a lucky turn of events.
But skate. shines through online capabilities, with the option to record live clips of yourself and post them online (similar to Halo 3) and the ability to host skating sessions with a group of online friends (which, might I add, wasn’t as entertaining as the old online Tony Hawk sessions). At the end of the day, where skate. succeeds in gameplay invasion, lacks in replay value for those who’ve learned to love the gimmicks originally drawn out by Tony Hawk. Guess I’m biased…
DESIGN
skate. is beautiful to look at when pushing your board down a traffic-ridden street during sunset. Great level design, not a detail missed when capturing the city feel translated into a video game. Though, the right-analog stick might seem like great idea to include for a skating title, I’ve been over how the right analog stick controls the entire rhythm of play and how it’s seen as one of the main selling point of a game.
But the level design for gameplay is basically the same throughout the game (grind on a bench, jump a set of stairs, grind on the sidewalk, watch out for cars; basically found in every area of the game). And the game gets harder by basically increasing the difficulty and score achieved y repeating these same combos.
The game doesn’t create much conflict or any entertaining aspects through the story, since it’s very easy to lose interest after gaining a third or fourth sponsor (right around the time the game gets harder as well), despite its unattractive ‘get skating exposure in your hometown by any means possible on your board’ demeanor. The game is very easy to see as frustrating, and its simple to see why the casual gamer won’t give much replay value to this after breezing through the challenges and trick competitions with various thumb flicks.
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