skate.
September 21,2007 - For years now, anyone who's wanted a skateboarding game to play has only had the Tony Hawk series to choose from. While Neversoft's games were never bad, the series has started to feel a little long in the tooth. EA saw an opportunity to get into this genre of game by doing something a little different. The result is EA Black Box's skate, a game that changes everything up, from the controls to the physics.

EA has gone with a new control mechanic for skate. The left stick controls your body movement and the right stick handles your board. They refer to this system as "FlickIt", which is an apt moniker for it. If you flick the right stick down then up you'll perform an Ollie, down then diagonally up and to the right will get you a Kickflip. There are many other combinations that will yield different tricks. It's a unique system which works well for the most part, but does take some getting used to. Skate also makes use of physics to determine whether your tricks will succeed or not. Landing on a rail at a 90 degree angle and expecting to take off in a grind is not possible in this game. The timing of your jump and the angle of your approach all play a huge part in determining whether you land a trick smoothly or whether you eat a face full of pavement. All of this gives the game a much more realistic feel, which will definitely appeal to some people, but turn off others.

Skate's main mode is the Career Mode. Here you'll create a skater using a slimmed down version of the EA GameFace create-a-character system. You’re limited to a handful of options, which is a bit of a shame. Even with the limitations, the create-a-skater is more comprehensive than what's been seen before, but it's just not as comprehensive as one would like. Once you've created your skater you're given a brief tutorial on how to operate the FlickIt controls and then sent on your way. The career mode has several different event types to compete in. There are Photo Shoots, Skate Jams, and friendly games of S.K.A.T.E. which is similar to H.O.R.S.E. in Basketball. One skater sets a trick that the other skater must match. There are also Film Challenges. In these your goal is to perform tricks to a certain criteria within a fixed amount of time. These can be quite challenging as sometimes they throw wildly differing styles of goals in the same challenge. Completing these challenges earns you coverage. Earn enough coverage and you make the cover of a magazine. This works well overall, though some challenges ask you to do some very specific things which are difficult to do with the analog controls. They're by no means impossible, but expect to spend a lot of time retrying goals until you finally figure out what they want you to do and then figure out how to do it.

Aside from the single player Career Mode, there is a fully featured online mode to get into. Most of the Career event types can be played online, including Free Skate, Jam, Best Trick, and some others. The game's online performance is a little sketchy at times. It is really susceptible to lag which will not only throw your timing off, but slow the game right down. When all the players have a good connection, this isn't really an issue. But if there is someone with a bad connection in the session you'll feel it. It really doesn't help that skate's connection to EA Nation tends to drop at random times. When it works, the online play is great, but expect a few laggy sessions here and there.

Online play isn't all that skate offers though. EA has set up a video and photo sharing site called skate.Reel. In game footage can be saved and then uploaded to the web for others to see, rate, and comment on. It's sort of like YouTube, only for skate videos. The site is still in beta, and right now it's limited to only three videos and six photos. This will likely be increased as the site matures. It's a cool addition, and one that will certainly add some lasting value to the game.

Skate's presentation is excellent overall. The character models are well done and have a lot of detail to them. Moreover they animate smoothly. Transitions between tricks don't feel disjointed, which has always been a problem with the Tony Hawk series. The city you'll be skating in also looks excellent. There's a lot of detail in the streets, buildings, cars, pedestrians, and everything else you'll come across. What makes this city interesting is that it looks like a real city, not like a series of ramps and rails in a city setting. When you do see skateable constructs in the city they look like they were rigged up by a few people who are both good with a skateboard and a power saw. The only real fault that skate has in its visuals is the camera can freak out at times and clip through the environment. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it really sticks out.

A skating game needs good audio. Let's face it, if the sound of urethane wheels on wood, cobblestones, or pavement doesn't sound right, it takes away from the experience. Skate has no such issues. All of the sound effects are spot on, whether it's skateboard wheels riding over the sidewalk or your skater meeting the pavement, all of the sounds seem right. Skate also has a great soundtrack. There are tracks in there from Motorhead, Nirvana, NWA, Cheap Trick, and lots of others. EA You can choose to listen to the music as played through the speakers in the environment, which means that only some spots of the city have music playing, or if you prefer you can pick a playlist and have the songs playing all the time. Having the choice is a nice touch. Another nice feature is the city-goers chatter. You'll hear some of the strangest things while skating, sometimes causing you to stop and think "Wait, what?" The only sticking point is you will hear them repeat themselves a lot. Overall though, this game has great audio production value.

Skate finally settles the question of whether two skateboarding games can co-exist. It offers more realistic gameplay that will appeal to those who have wanted a more down-to-earth style of skateboarding game. You really feel every movement in your hands, and when it happens on-screen, it only seems right. The online play and community add a lot to the package, and will keep you playing for a long time to come. If you've been waiting all these years for a reason to get lost in a skateboarding game that does the sport justice-and also happens to be a ton of fun to jam with-skate was made for you.

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