A Lingering Unease

Bit late to the party on this one, but it seems I'm not the only one that wasn't entirely enthralled with the Skate 2 demo given the small but vocal minority expressing a similar displeasure on most forums. The first Skate wasn't perfect by a long shot, but it was an unpretentious effort that happened to feature a truly unique and intuitive control system along with a real simulation feel. Other than the controls, the sequel seems to retain little of that charm.

From the moment you're presented with the opening cinematic, this all becomes crystal clear as you're presented with some of the worst kind of skateboarding cliches and caricatured "personalities" this side of Tony Hawk's Proving Ground.

Immediately, the game feels a little off, and lots of people have commented on this. I couldn't quite put my finger on it until I popped in the original and noticed the lack of motion blur in the sequel. The increased frame rate was a contributor, yes, but this seems to have been the main culprit.

There are plenty of new tricks at your disposal and they're nice to have for variety's sake, but they're not explained very well, and some of them are fairly awkward to use. My biggest gripe is probably with the board physics, which unlike the first game where every trick was uniquely animated, are much more rigid and Tony Hawk-esque. It seems almost impossible to flub a trick unless you're purposely trying to land on your face, and you still get a picture perfect landing half the time anyway.

I won't go into the on-foot controls since enough people have taken the piss out of them, but needless to say, it's like controlling a robot made of wet cardboard, powered by a flashlight battery.

I'd like to say I'm hopeful that the final product clears some of these issues up, but given how fundamental most of them are to gameplay and especially since it hits in less than a week, that would be like hoping for the sky to suddenly turn green at this point. Playing Skate 2 is sort of like going to bed with your girlfriend's evil-twin. You know something's not right, but it's not immediately apparent, and things are just functional enough to make the experience enjoyable.