Skate 2 Review

Skateboarding has always been one of my interests. Although not really capable of doing it in real life, I have been following the culture including the big names, competitions, and skatevids. I have played virtually every skate game ever, and unfortunately that included all of the games in the tired Tony Hawk series. Naturally, I was excited last year when EA entered the scene with Skate. This game revolutionized the action-sport genre with its innovative Flickit controls, and realistic gameplay and level design. With Skate being so revolutionary it is a tough act to follow, and follow they did with Skate 2. My thoughts and review after the jump.

First, lets discuss some of the new gameplay features of the game. In this years game there were not any changes in the basic design of the gameplay, rather it is an extension of last years system. All of the flickit controls that you have learned to love all work exactly the same. Now, though, you have the ability to take your feet of the board. On the 360 the X or A button will take off one of your feet once in the air. This allows for tricks like footplants, bonelesses, no complies, ollie norths/souths, judos, etc. You can now also totally get off your board with a press of the Y button and walk/jump/run. You can grab things with the left button when off your board giving you much control. You can skitch, move objects for new lines, and do handplants on halfpipes. These simple extensions allow for a slew of new tricks or as the team at Blackbox said, they "doubled the bag of tricks". They also added hall of meat mode where you can fling your body around in the air and get points for doing the most things in the air and breaking the most bones.

All these features work fairly well except the walking and moving objects. You cannot for example walk backwards, but instead you actually have to turn like your on a board (sometimes very slowly too). It feels kind of awkward, along with moving objects. There are some glitches like your character randomly falling, letting go of an object unexpectedly, and objects spinning out of control. Sometimes these glitches come in handy if you need to get an object somewhere it is not supposed to be, but they are for the most part annoying. Thats really my only gripe in gameplay, now lets look at the career mode.

In the original Skate, the career mode did not have much of a story. Basically, you followed the old story of amateur to pro. Along the way you did a bunch of challenges, and ended up on the covers of magazines, and participated in the X-Games. Thats pretty much it. In Skate 2 there is a story, that is carried over from Skate It (the DS and Wii version of skate). The story is that an earthquake rocked San Vanelona. For some reason (explained in skate it) you are sent to jail. When you get out, the whole city has be redesigned, and a company called MongoCorp(awesome name if you know anything about the hatred of the mongo stance) has made it difficult to skate with increased security and rail blockers. Now you have to regain your pro cred with the skate community. Along the way you help Rob Derdyk fundraise for a new skatepark, and complete many challenges, video and photo shoots, and competitions.

Other than the story the career mode is essentially the same. All of the challenges haven’t really changed, and it still follows the basic model of try, fail and repeat. I did like how the video challenges were more specific and weren’t just about points. They were also more realistic. In general the career mode is better, but not that much of a change. The story still could have been more in-depth, but honestly the career mode isn’t that big for most people. Most people are more interested in the creative aspects and online.

User created content was a huge success for skate. and the same goes for this game. The replay editor has been improved with a tripod cam and a new follow cam. For both you can choose the exact angle you want to be looking from unlike the restrictive 6 views from skate 1. You can also slow clips down to 10% instead of just 25%. The uploading has been changed to allow an unlimited number of clips with a combined length of 90 seconds. You can also buy a dlc pack that allows you to have more control over the exact movement of the camera(with blended keyframes!) and increases the total clip length to 5 minutes. This is great for all those people creating skate videos. They also added a graphics creator to put in custom decks and shirt designs. They also added the ability to upload/download other peoples spots they created, and have leaderboards for those spots.

I felt the improvements were really good in this area, but I do have a problem with the dlc. The camera angles in the filmer pack really should have been included in the game, and easily could have been. For me it is a must need, but 800 Microsoft Points is a bit much for most.

There were also good improvements in online too. Now you can start freeskate sessions from from career mode or local freeskate. There are small activities you can do with friends (not unlike Burnout Paradise) also. I haven’t had a chance to try those yet, but it seems like fun little challenges to do when you just want to chill with some friends. I have played best trick, hall of meat and jam competitions online, and everything is good and smooth for the most part. The improvements may not seem that big, but they are there and I think they handled online well.

As for graphics and sound, this game covers that well. The graphics are really well done, and the sound is just as good as last years (which was award winning). The graphics have improved especially with the characters, and for the most part, 60 frames per second. Also the lighting is really good and has the addition of some cool looking light flare effects. The soundtrack appeals a bit more to the general audience, but most people use custom soundtracks anyways. Sound effects are also top notch.

In the end, I think Blackbox really developed the best skateboard experience in gaming ever! (ya take that Activision, and oldmanknoops [please don't delete stuff from my post, damn!]) It would be really hard for me to go back to skate 1 now. It offers solid gameplay(local and online), really good user created content features, and awesome online features. A smooth buttery frame rate, along with the amazing graphics and sound are just icing on the cake. There are some glitches and the game could have been better (even without dlc) so its not perfect. Overall its a great game that I recommend anyone interested in action-sports to purchase. I am giving Skate 2 a rating of 9/10.