skate

Review from Cav and Cav - Thursday, 25 October 2007 @ 11:21am

Once upon a time, in various towns, where anyone could skate on any surface, grind on telephone and railway lines and jump 45 feet in the air to catch $100 notes that hung in the air on invisible hooks, there lived a guy named Tony Hawk. Along with his friends Bam, Andrew, Chad, Rodney, Rune, Mike V and a host of others, he showed us how to skate with our thumbs, by mashing a series of buttons. Eight versions of his product had us wearing out a variety of console controllers while attempting a 'Nollie Frontside Inverted McTwist 900 Double Grab', which you flipped into from a 'Darkslide railgrind from 50-50' which you performed off the roof of a police car, which you mounted after '360 Pop Shovit-ing' onto after your original '67 metre Nose Manual' which you started after dropping in from the roof of a five story building... which, of course, you just tagged with a can of spray paint. Tony was the King and his merry men would often get together with Wee Man and Steve-O from Jackass and Spiderman, Wolverine and Shrek from the world of animation, to perform all sorts of 'mad-crazy' tricks which were 'off the hook'.

One day, a stranger Ollied into town, with his own crew. Although he dressed the same and his intro music was virtually the same as Tony’s, no one recognized his face, nor that of his friends. These guys were different - shall we say they didn't skate to a different beat, but their actual style was different. Button mashing was not their thing, these guys relied on precision stick movements. They bore the brand of Electronic Arts – they were known as skate.




Enough of Storytime with Uncle Cav – let's get down to it:

The game play area of skate is HUGE. San Vanelona spans over four 'hoods' or 'boroughs', if you will: The Res, Suburbs, Downtown and Old Town. These can be accessed by foot (or board) or by use of a rail system. Personally, I felt more restricted by the environment when I was playing WoW, compared to this. Each section has it’s own characteristics, and they all contain special skate spots. These are signified by an increase in background music – No tunes? No quality skating … which was sometimes annoying when trying to complete a set task in a basic area. While we are one the subject of music, the line up is awesome. Well maybe that’s just my opinion, but when I started playing I heard the Ramones ‘Psychotherapy’, then Cheap Trick’s ‘Surrender’ followed by Nirvana with ‘Lounge Act’, I felt like I had set the songlist myself. Okay I’m showing my age!

There are all sorts of tricks to perform, and they all start of by using the new ‘Flickit’ system which has you using a thumbstick instead of hitting a button to launch into an Ollie. After years of playing Mr Hawk’s brand, this took a little getting used and I still find myself hitting the Y button to grind occasionally. Slight variations on your 'Flick' direction modify your trick type, while moving the other stick moves the body of your skater. To borrow a quote, this has seen me involved in "a metric arseload" of painful looking falls, where I slide down a decent on my left cheekbone for well over fifteen metres. Once you have the hang of the 'Flickit' the streets are your oyster, but for the life of me I couldn’t work out how to handplant, or am I just too Old School again? The tasks and challenges in skate come thick and fast. It will be a rare moment that you find yourself without something to do. Your main goal is to get your mug on the cover of skateboard mags and gain sponsorship. Around the map you will find Skate Pros who will challenge you. Should you meet their challenge, they will reward you by informing their sponsor about your abilities and give you the option to impress them for sponsorship. Rewards come in the form of brand name clothing, decks, trucks and wheels. It’s a long but very testing process and you’re sure to see some gruesome bails while you’re having a crack at it!




One of the best things in skate are Session Markers. Session Markers give you a starting point for your trick lines. If you need to get some speed up to perform a trick, starting at the top of a hill is a great way to help you along, but if a San Vanelona Taxi decides you would make a great hood ornament, you really don’t want to have to climb that hill again, do you? Set a Session Marker before you start your run and you can restart there over and over (and over and over and over and over, in my case) again – no problem!

In regards to the game’s rating I actually don’t even understand why skate was given an ‘M’ rating for Moderate Violence, I just don’t see it. Is it because of a colour coded skeleton that explains you the extent of your injuries after a big fall? Is it because a security guard in a yellow jacket pushes you over, for rolling through a No Skate Zone? If that is the case, we better give a rating to our schoolyards, because I remember a solid game of British Bulldogs was a hell of a lot more violent than this.

… what did you just say? British what? Oh yeah, that age thingy again….

Basically my gripe is that Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam was given a ‘G’ rating even though you can throw a punch at an opponent while you are both doing about 85 kph on a downhill slope and send them crashing. No wonder there are such screwy decisions coming out of the OFLC at the moment (That one’s for you AJ!).

Remember those awesome stacks I was telling you about? Well you can save them and replay them in slow motion so you can see the exact time your skater’s left testicle is pulverized into mush on a handrail as you screw up yet another grind (Squirmfactor +10). Still photos, like the ones you see here can be saved and viewed later through the menus. If you chose to upload your work, these are apparently available to view on the web, but I have had one mother of a time trying to locate my pics. Although I did find out that if I you playing skate, go to your friends list on the dashboard and bring up a friend’s info, if they have saved skate footage, you can view it from there. So go, throw the skate disc in your 360 and check out the ‘glitch stack’ I saved! NOW THAT’S AIR, BABY!




Another thing that online capability gives you is multiplayer. There are freeskate and competitive sessions to choose from, either public or private sessions. I kinda get the feeling that the competitive multiplayer was just thrown in, with a downhill death ride race through the gates kinda feeling like Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. But then again, I suppose there is only so much you can do with a skateboard. Personally I found that the more people that joined in, the slower the gameplay became, which was really disappointing… but of course that may be a combination of my net connection and playing with foreigners. Sure it’s bringing you and your friends together, but I really don’t feel it will be the new online, multiplayer ‘thing to do’ … maybe if they went with something like Medal of Honor : Purple Haze Deck Dazes. Yeah! Grinds and Grenades! Halfpipes and Howitzers! Melons and M-16s! Watch out Project Joystick II, your Dung Beetles don’t stand a chance!

Summary

This is a solid skating title, a must from those addicted to grip tape to those who don't like to admit they can’t even Ollie (What the hell you looking at me for?) It may even get a bite from those new to the genre.

Pros

Great Soundtrack, short learning curve, the most believable Skateboarding title available.

Cons

Repetitive in places, lack of constant music, no getting off your board, Pedestrians! Who the hell invited them?

Sub-Con: Poorly structured set up on ea.com for retrieving uploaded footage. Not actually a game problem, but more of a web problem.