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Thursday 6 March, 2008
Gameplay:
After what was admittedly several more hours of play I find the game much more entertaining. Now having gotten used to the trick system It is easy to do large lines of tricks just by going nuts on the thumbsticks. In my playing I obtained sponsor companies for both my board and shoes, so I perks for rocking their gear. I also worked for two magazines and seem to never exhaust the videos or photo-shoots I could have. The way in which the game has you film videos is very creative and allows you infinite possibilities as well. You are given a list of films each with a different sequence, point value, or special circumstance. Then you skate around the city and shoot them when you find an appropriate spot, so everywhere you skate is totally up to you.
Another feature of the game which as I complete more challenges is getting more important to me, are the spots. Around the city there are 30+ places the designers deemed as 'spots'. These are all massive ramps or rails, or have ridiculous angles which make for nice tricks. To find the spots though you must explore the city, then when you find one you have to own it by doing a massive trick. Once a spot is owned you can use it in multiplayer and it is marked on your map for you to later go back to.
Design:
In skate you can tell that a lot of though went into the layout of the city, as the game is directly dependent on the environment which you preform you tricks. I thought it was interesting however how much the city looks like a city. Very rarely in skate do you find yourself saying, 'that ramp wouldn't actually be there.' This is really one of the things that sets it apart, you feel like what your doing has some realism. A good example of this are curbs. In a skateboarding game it would be vastly easier to just smooth out curbs and allow you to skate over them, but in skate they are realistic, which means your lines can be blocked when transferring from street to sidewalk. This added realism makes you view the world as you would in reality and incorporate the curb in your trick sequence.
The other design quality worth noting is the level of tricks. In the past boarding games of all sorts have been plagued by having the harder tricks totally out of the realm of real human possibilities. Skate doesn't. I'n skate the hardest tricks you can possibly do are executed by pro skaters all the time. This combined with the rest of the experience gives skate a ridiculous amount of realism when compared to other games like it.
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