Skate Updated Hands On

You've seen them: those painful movies on YouTube that feature loads of skaters wiping out while flipping and grinding in public parks and school yards, usually set to some sort of scream-rock soundtrack. If EA's upcoming skating game Skate has anything to say about it, it won't be long before you see more of the same, except this time the skaters will be virtual. We had a chance to get our hands on an updated build, got in some gnarly wrecks in the process, and then shared our failure with the rest of the attendees at a recent press event at EA Canada.

If you missed our initial hands-on look at the game in March, here's a quick refresher. Skate is EA's latest foray into the world of skateboarding games (anyone remember Street Sk8er?), and it's a slightly more realistic take on the sport than you might expect. That's most evident in the game's controls, which admittedly take some getting used to, especially if you're an ardent Tony Hawk devotee.

In basic terms, Skate's controls revolve around the two analog sticks; the left stick controls the body and direction of the skater, while the right analog stick is used to control the skateboard, and thus the lion's share of the tricks. For example, a basic ollie is executed by pushing down on the right stick and then quickly up. Conversely, a nollie is executed by first moving the stick up and then flicking it down. Because of the flexibility of the right analog stick, and the multitude of movements you can make with it, it's easy to see how you will have a lot of tricks available to you right away. In fact, practically all of the tricks in Skate are tied to the analog sticks and the left and right triggers (which are used for board grabs with either the left or right hand, respectively). That leaves the face buttons for the basics, such as pushing off with your left or right foot by pressing the X or A buttons, respectively.

Beyond the mechanics of the trick system, you'll find that a big part of the challenge in Skate is in setting yourself up correctly to pull off these fancy moves. Skate's approach to emulating the sport is purely physics based, and as a result, a simple grind in Skate is not nearly as simple as in an arcade game like SSX Blur. To execute a proper grind on a rail in Skate, you'll need to not only approach the rail at the right angle, but also make sure you've got enough speed to carry you once you're balanced on top of the railing. Then, of course, there are rails of different heights and lengths, and each will require a slightly different adjustment to be successful.

Be it a spectacular trick combination or a painful crunch during a particularly bad wipeout, sooner or later you're going to run into a moment in Skate that you'd love to show off to your friends. Thanks to some cool replay tools, you'll be able to do just that in this game. Using the game's flexible replay tool, you can rewind anywhere between 30 and 60 seconds prior to your current position (depending on how active you were during that stretch), and then review, replay, and record the action using a variety of camera angles. The replay tool we saw was a work in progress, and Skate producers told us that the final tool will have a lot more options in terms of camera angels and special effects you can add to your clip to give it more pizzazz.

Once you've got your latest masterpiece recorded to your hard drive, you'll be able to upload the clip to a YouTube-style service hosted by EA. After we recorded a particularly painful-looking wipeout, we uploaded our clip to the server and watched it in all its blood-curdling glory. Visitors to the site will be able to rate the clips and vote for their favorites. As of now, the movies will be in Flash format, though EA said they were investigating saving the movies in a different format in the future.

Your goal in Skate will be to gain as much notoriety and fame for your skater as possible in the open-world environment of San Vanelona, a fictional city that draws influence from three real-world locales: San Francisco, Vancouver, and Barcelona. In addition to the skate park we saw in our original look at the game, we saw a few new locales, including a downtown area complete with office buildings and plenty of stairs and handrails to grind on. The city locales will eventually have plenty of traffic to contend with--in the form of both pedestrians and automobiles. In addition, not everyone will be happy to see you and your skateboard; in the designated "no skate" zones, the security will be tighter than normal. As a result, you'll need to watch where you're skating. While most of San Vanelona will be open to you right away, there are certain areas that you will need to unlock, including a locale we saw during the demo known unofficially as "Top of the World," a fantasy skate park that appeared to be tucked into the hilly peak of a mountain, complete with drastic elevation changes and plenty of ramps to jump off of. Here, we checked out one of the many challenges available in the game's single-player mode; in this case, it was a skate jam where the player took on three other skaters to rack up the most trick points in a timed competition.

There will be money to earn in the game, but your overarching goal is to become famous. Periodically, you'll be asked to complete photo challenges. If you're successful, you might get your photo in a skate publication--if you're really good, you'll make it onto the cover of a magazine. Along the way, you'll run into many of Skate's lineup of real-life skating pros, such as Tommy Guerrero and Danny Way, and you'll even compete against them. As an example, you might play a game of SKATE against one of the pros--think of it as the skating equivalent of HORSE in basketball, where you'll be required to pull off tricks in the same sequence as the pro you're following.

Like another EA game--Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08--Skate looks to be taking the idea of user-created content in games seriously. We expect it won't be long after the game's release until we see a flood of Skate-created videos floating around the Internet en masse. Skate is scheduled for release later this year, and we'll be bringing you more on the game in the coming months.