Skate Park City is a very engaging and massively entertaining futuristic skating game with a decent multiplayer mode
What people fail to realise is, that Tony Hawk, Shaba or Neversoft aren't the only ones with rights to make skateboarding games. They just happen to be big in this area but as a result of this every other skateboarding title is steriotyped as a Tony Hawk hybrid. That is frequently the case but is it now...?
In the game, you are basically in a futuristic world where there are robots and strange vehicles. Your friend is kidnaped by this evil robot dude and he refuses to give him back until you have successfully completed all his challenges!
And so, the game starts!
There is no obligation to start a challenge, you are free to skate around the large level, collect objects or do side missions. You can begin a mission whenever you like.
There is a great difference between each challenge, very few are similar to each other.
They can range from something as simple as grind the 5 marked spots in one combo, collect all objects, get a certain number of points or as complex as go around the level and grind on all the rails with birds on to scare them away in a certain amount of time, find away to destroy the enemy..etc.
As you may have picked out by now, the gameplay requires more than just skating. You will get some very strange equipment such as the laser which functions like a grappling hook and will allow flying onto vehicles or buildings, You will use your board as a weapon in combat with robots, you will even be able to use some strange vehicles; such as the one which allows you to hover around the level and the one which gives you the opportunity to fire missiles at anything you like (If you think this is a Tony Hawk game rip-off, think again).
Overall, the game offers complete unlimited freedom!
The music is, while a little repetitive, quite nice and adds the right flavour to a game of this genre.
Sound effects are downright awesome, featuring explosions, various different skating sounds on different surfaces, smashes, crashes and many more!
There is almost never any sound problems on this game. It's all good.
You could just complain about how there is very little texture detail in this game but the game is in fact in a cartoonish style and so an great level of detail would just defeat the purpose of the style!
From first impressions, the game looks rather good but not particularly special but there is in fact quite a lot put into this game graphics-wise. There is either no or little repetition in terrain, objects, buildings and scenery. Every corner of this game looks completely brand new and dissimilar to areas before.
The world does feel surprisingly alive, this is owing probably to the pedestrians, the moving vehicles, the birds and a few other things.
Multiplayer, while fun, does not quite live up to single player mode. The levels are split up into smaller areas to skate in. This is beneficial because the size of the levels are so grand that you could play a trick attack mode for half an hour and may not even run into your friend/s once! This is however a downside because you no longer feel that you are playing in an open ended environment and the areas feel somewhat empty.
On the other hand, there are loads of different multiplayer game modes and many different areas to play them in and so Multiplayer feels like a whole new game mode as opposed to an insignificant and rushed extra.
In a nutshell, this game features great mechanics, pretty sounding sound effects, a great variety and variation in game play, a living and breathing world and basically an innovative and fun game with a strong replay value.
This game is a must have for every PSP owner who is a fan of skating or just open ended games!