Skate is a lot better than Tony Hawk if you like realistic skateboarding.
First of all the thing that makes this game completely different from Tony Hawk games is instead of pushing face buttons, you do flip tricks and grinds with the analog stick, I know it may sound hard but trust me it's easy to pick up on. The city is realistic and there isn't a ramp every turn you take you either have to find a skate park or make a line with what you got in front of you. The story is about doing photo and film challenges to get noticed and get in the skateboard mag, and thrasher magazine eventually getting on the cover and going to the X Games. You also get sponsors on the way. That's basically the rundown of the story but the challenges are just awesome. Some challenges will frustrate you but on the positive side bailing and seeing which bones you broke is extremely amusing. Although one thing the Tony Hawk series has been doing is in most games you can get off your board which in Skate you can't which is a little disappointing but it's easy to look past. There is a nice feature that lets you set markers so if you want to keep trying to olli down that huge staircase and keep falling you can go back to the marker instead of going all the way back to where you started. There are a lot of goals in the game like death races, and owning the spot. The game is free roam so you can explore the city at will but there are no skate zones which if you enter them security will chase you and try to knock you down.
Overall any real skater will love this game and if you're a fan of skateboarding this is not a game to miss.