Trust me, you don't have to be a fan of the sport to enjoy this game.
Skate 3 is not a reinvention of the series, but since its so much fun to play, it doesn't have to be. It retains the almost insultingly simple (yet surprisingly deep) control scheme of the last two games, it is still set in a fairly realistic world and at no time do you have to chase a fat man to splatter him with rotten tomatoes.
Basically, it hasn't gone down the route its rival Tony Hawk series went down, though to be fair to Activision's franchise, the third entry in that series was arguably the best. No, this is Skate by numbers, and veterans of the series are likely to feel a bit let down by the lack of progress the series has made; from a game mechanics standpoint at least.
It's all so delightfully corporate. Obviously you can increase board sales by completing the dozens of challenges littered around the all-new Port Carverton location, another one of those fabled American cities where seemingly everything is curved just right.
But the interesting aspects come in when you look at things like taking photos or creating videos. Upload these to through Xbox Live and, should other Skate players download them, you will get a boost to your sales total, encouraging you to take part in an aspect many might have ignored in the previous games.