Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

40 to 100 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Grows on you"

Graphics:

Skaters and their surroundings look tight. Materials have their natural reflections and all look very realistic. Except for the lack of quality on the pedestians and car models their's little more to complain about the graphics of Skate 2

Controls:

Skate 2 is the most fun skateboard game I played since the rise of the first Tony Hawk game on ; in my case, the N64. The main reason for this are probaly the controls of Skate 2. Where TH became repeative and old, this game gave an intense and fresh feeling to skating games. The controls come close to being a sim. For everyone who ever rides or rode a real skateboard the game controls will feel like playing with your fingerboard. Every move represented by one of your feet in real life, is put into the same motion made by your right analog stick.

For an easy example, an olly is made by holding the right stick down, to move it back up again. The same motion your front foot would make in real life. A kickflip is made the same way except you'll move the stick diagonal to the (depending on your stance) left- or right uppercorner. With this kind of system comes a variety of fliptricks, grabs, fingerflips, grinds, manuals and plants.
The feeling after executing and landing a trick is satisfying and makes you feel like you did it for real.

The only downside of the controlsystem is the execution of more complex fliptricks. The moves for tricks like the Laserflip or Inward Heelflip, are a to precise task for the analog stick. It's high sensibility makes you fail the move while thinking you just did it right, even after playing and practising the game for many hours, some fliptricks still dont give a guaranteed hit.



Environment:

The city of San Van is just HUGE. Having the ability of just cruising through it seamlessly is great fun. There're lots of skateparcs, pools, skatespots and locations to skate on. Actually everything in the city is skatable.


Goals:

Your goal in the game is to work your way up to fame and to free the city from Monocorp, a company that guards spots from skaters and makes objects unskatable by putting blocks on ledges and other grindable objects.
You'll achive this by taking part of photoshoots, races, videoshoots and challenges. By buying skate venues and taking part of impression sessions you'll show the city skaters are not dead and they deserve a place in the city.
Each photoshoot wants you to perform a certain trick, grind, plant or drop-inn. Videoshoots more likely want you to do a serie of tricks. Challenges want you to win competitions or duel in a game of S-K-A-T-E. Races contain an exciting downhill track with lots of traffic or gabs to ruin your day.
Beside the road to fame there're several side-objectives, such as dominating locations, huge drop-inns and Hall of Meat.
To dominate a location you need to beat a certain score on an object or within a certain area. There're lots of these kind of locations and once you owned them they'll be available in multipayer games. Hall of Meat is the opposite of all you'll normally trying to do, instead of performing a slick trick with a thight landing, you'll need to get lost of your board in mid-air, spin and turn as much as you can to additionally smash into the ground and break as many bones as possible. If you overkill your skater hard enough, a screen will pop-up showing you all the bones you've broken through a Rontgen photo.


Multiplayer

Multiplayer challenge you to your friends in a game of S-K-A-T-E, Hall of Meat or Spot.
S-K-A-T-E, gives one the chance to show a trick for the rest to imitate. Hall of Meat is won by the player that brings the most damage to himself. And Spot is won by the player with the highest score on a chosen location.
The only downside is not having the ability to roam through San Van with a friend sitting next to you.
Ofcourse this is made possibile during online play, where the city is seperated in several areas where you can start an activity where other players in that same area can chose to join that activity or to decline it. Activities differ from the location you're at. It can be crossing a certain gab or getting a high score on an object.