Skate 2 review
Last year’s Skate from EA proved to us that there’s more to skateboarding games than Tony Hawks Pro Skater series which has started to lose its way recently. We take a closer look at the follow up…
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As with the original, Skate 2 features some pretty cool live action sequences starring a cast of some of the best skaters around including Bob Dyrdek, Terry Kennedy and Darren Navarrette et al.
You start off as the same unknown skater that you worked up the ranks in the first game and somehow you’ve ended up in prison. When you get out you notice that San Vanelona has changed a lot while you were inside. A huge corporation has rebuilt the downtown area, doing away with all the popular skating spots and bringing in a team of yellow-uniformed security guards to spoil the fun.
Times are hard but there’s still plenty to do in order to rebuild your reputation. Like in the first game, you can do this by following skate magazine photographers around town and taking up their challenges. Pass enough and you get to feature in the magazine articles which you can keep track of via links on Slappy’s Blog, which tracks your progress.
Impress the pros and beat their challenges to snap up a sponsorship deal. Enter competitions to earn a name for yourself and cash prizes too. A more fun way of making moolah is to bet on yourself in a downhill death race where you skate down a steep street circuit with three other skaters, dodging traffic and crossing the finish line first.
There’s plenty of secret places to skate hidden away and if you pull a suitably big trick score you get to own the spot, then nail an even more impressive move to kill the spot.
As with the first game, the right analogue stick controls the tricks, although the difference between the moves is so subtle that you’ll often find yourself spread-eagled on the ground having made the wrong choice. There’s a load of new moves too - foot plants, hand plants, hippy jumps and you can even grab a ride on passing cars.
Saving recordings of your best moves for posterity is now easier, with the ability to place cameras where you want them - a fixed tripod that centres on the skater and a moveable camera that follows the action. Film effects are no longer included in the game, but are available as download content, which is a crazy idea because the amount of extra revenue made by these purchases nowhere near outweighs the poorer quality of the majority of saved clips that won’t be using the effects.
Now you can also step off the board and move around, making it easier to get into position to start your run although I warn you that movement is far from slick. You can also grab loose objects scattered around the skate spots and move them to create new opportunities for jumps and tricks.
Party play and online modes let you ride around and compete with your friends. There are new freeskate activities and co-op challenge, very much along the lines of Burnout Paradise with location-based tasks. Also, the skate spots you’ve created and edited can be uploaded and shared with the Skate community.
Skate 2 may not be as revolutionary as its predecessor but the minor problems have been ironed out and there’s enough new stuff to make it a proper sequel. It does still have its flaws but its still the most realistic skateboarding sim yet.