Skate: Extended hands-on preview

The irony of playing EA’s Skate, a simulation of a sport as physically demanding as skateboarding with a controller in hand, while perched comfortably on a beanbag is certainly not lost on us. Irony aside, after spending some quality time with an early version of the game, Skate is the most realistic skateboarding experience we’ve played yet. The control system, game-world physics, graphics, and interwoven culture that peppers the title culminate in an experience that for a moment transcends the couch and puts you on the board as you careen down sloped streets, pop tricks, and build your name in the competitive professional skate scene.

The concept of scene skating isn’t new, and the soon-to-be-released Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground focuses on three style: building your industry profile as a pro skater, doing it for the love of the sport, and deforming your terrain to get the most out of your skating environment. Skate takes a slightly different tact, with the career campaign focused largely around building your name by getting coverage and completing tasks to get your face on the cover of the major skate mags.

Customisation plays a huge role in Skate, and rather than just offer the token rotating player dressing room with your choice of the black or the white t-shirt, Skate lets you kit out your avatar with various physical attributes. There are options here we’re more used to seeing in an RPG like Oblivion, giving you full control of the look and feel of your skater. Using the player creation tool you can systematically create your ultimate on-screen persona by widening their jaw, changing the incline on the nose, and putting some more pout in your skater’s lips for when you bail landing a gnarly trick. There are a couple of different hair styles to choose from, as well as facial hair. Both can be coloured independently, although our code only featured about five preset colours to choose from, we’d much have preferred a colour bar to manually select with the analogue stick like the facial features. Once you’ve got the physical attributes down you can begin customising the accessories of your player. Here you can add sunglasses, wristbands, hats, t-shirts and more. Items are both unlocked through the career mode and purchased.

Completing a challenge often adds a t-shirt style to the store which you can then purchase using in-game currency you'll accrue by completing tasks. Last but certainly not least you’ll want to select your tools of the trade--your skateboard. Like the accessories store, you won’t have all the options unlocked from the outset--after all where would the fun be in that?--but there’s a reasonable selection from all the major skate brands including GIRL boards. The level of tweaking goes all the way to the ground, with you able to select your deck, then a set of trucks from another brand, followed by menus dedicated entirely to wheels.

Once you’ve finished trying on shirts and checking out boards you’ll hit the game. It’s worth pointing out that unlike many of the previous Tony Hawk titles where you selected and played as a pro, Skate is about you, and building your name. Your interaction with pros is entirely organic--and entirely up to you--with you meeting them dotted around the various skate spots and learning a trick, or performing a goal to unlock them as a playable character. The game opens with a lengthy full motion video intro of you attempting to land a trick, only to be taken out by a truck. All the major roles from the ambulance drivers, convenience store owner, surgeons, to the café sitters along the way are played by the pro skaters in the game as you travel to the hospital. Your rehab is hitting the local skate park where you’ll face your first taste of gameplay, and some of the associated control learning curve hurdles.

Skate’s control system is an odd beast. Rather than rely on the left analogue stick to move and each of the eight controller buttons to perform a set mapped function such as grind, grab or flip, the only time you’ll take your thumb off the right stick is to hit either the X or A buttons to push yourself along with either your left or right foot. You’ll only need three full button presses to get up to full speed, so once you’re at full pelt you’ll be back on the stick. Given the control scheme is so different to other skating titles, tutorials are a necessity, and they're your first stop when you hit the asphalt. Initially the Flickit control system can be incredibly daunting, as the right analogue is responsible for all the moves you’re able to perform--a huge departure from hold left, press button, perform trick. Once you’ve followed the basic tutes like learning to ollie, kickflip, and grind you can start tearing it up straight away as there's no need to unlock other tricks to be able to perform them.

The first challenge you'll come across is a friendly game of HORSE--or in this case S.K.A.T.E--a staple of any skate game, and sees you trying to perform tricks against another skater by either setting the pace, or try and follow their example to avoid receiving a letter. You won’t be able to repeat the same tricks over for an easy win, so you’ll be forced to try out some of those Flickit skills you just learned. Experimentation is the best way, and a short sharp down pull followed by a forty-five-degree angle flick on the right stick will see you do either a heel or kickflip. Once you’ve got that down pat you can add the left stick to the mix to spin your skater mid air, giving you 180 and 360 flip moves, effectively tripling your trick repertoire. Beating your rival will give you a few contacts to speak with, and before you know it you’ll be lining up video and photo shoots to strut your stuff before the camera and get your name out in the skating circles.

In your backpack you’re armed with several tools to help you progress. The custom soundtrack feature controls the in-game audio and lets you skip straight to your favourite songs, Cheap Trick fans rejoice, if you didn’t get your "Surrender" fix with Guitar Hero II, or the upcoming Jam Sessions for the DS, you can now leave it looping in Skate forever, making it your own personal skating anthem if you’re so inclined. For everyone else, the soundtrack is varied, peppered with top shelf artists like Black Flag, Nirvana, NWA, and ZZ Top, and only further adds to the genuine skate sub-culture feel of the title. Your bag also contains a trick guide, showing you the combo to perform tricks, each with a tracking tool that tells you how many times you’ve performed it as well as the success rate. It’s no killer app, but it’s a nice little feature to troubleshoot your own play style and work out which tricks are giving you the most trouble before you take it to the streets. The other tool you’ll find yourself using often is the map, giving you a bird’s eye view of the entire San Vanelona city the game is set in, and the ability to zoom in on one area. This is particularly handy for tracking challenges and objectives such as competitions, photo opportunities, and meeting points. Rather than force you to traverse the entire zone, you can either hop a train or simply navigate to a marker on the map and hit the A button, instantly teleporting you to your destination. You can still skate your way there if you like, and the progressive streaming of the game means you won’t hit any load times as you skate around the city, but it gives the game a great pickup and play aspect that casual gamers are sure to love.

It’s not all roses though, with our preview code taking forever to load cut scenes, challenges and replays. It becomes particularly frustrating when you’re struggling to complete an objective, and rather than just reset and go again, you’re forced to sit through a delay between attempts. It’s a problem many users complained about when the Skate demo was released on Xbox Live recently, and we’re hoping it’s an issue that’s remedied before the game goes gold and hits retail shelves. Our other issue is that while the Skate city is expansive and the free skating between events is fun, the game features an experience bar which ticks up as you complete goals. Although there’s a range of various missions to complete, we had trouble negotiating a particularly vague set of instructions and were forced to continually attempt it in the hopes of moving on. Unfortunately there were no other photo goals at the time, so we couldn’t move on with the storyline and come back later when we worked out what it was the photographer wanted us to do.

The grounded simulation nature of Skate means that once you’ve fought and successfully conquered the Flickit control system reins, there’s a real sense of accomplishment when you casually ollie up onto the footpath to avoid a gutter, pop and kickflip as you skate down a monster hill, or watch the wheels continue to spin when you lift the nose of your board while performing a manual. The control system does have a slight learning curve, but it isn’t an incredibly difficult one and once you've mastered it, there's plenty of gameplay and challenges to keep you interested.