Skate 2 Hand’s On Impressions
I had the pleasure of spending some time with EA’s Black Box Studio in the lovely surroundings of Vancouver, Canada last week to get some hand’s on time with Skate 2. It was a lot of fun being invited to the Community Day event as well as getting to meet other people across the interweb who also run sites. I even met up with Andrew from PS3 Fanboy and was really surprised at how much we had in common as far as gaming goes. Dare I own a PS3 soon? (the horror)
Also, I must say that the Skate 2 Dev Team has some of the coolest developers on the planet. I can’t say enough about Chris “Cuz” Parry and Jay Balmer. They both take their craft very seriously yet maintain everything that makes them human with tons of humor and being real. You don’t get that often but these two guys kick ass. They’re skaters who happen to develop games and it shows in how well this game has done.
Anyway, let’s get to the nitty gritty of what you want. Was Skate 2 any good? If you want a quick answer then I’d have to say yes. If you enjoyed the first one, chances are you’ll love the new San Vanelona and Skate 2. There are a lot of new tricks and features that make it (so far), a competent sequel. Skate 2 has fine tuned the “Flickit” control scheme and it feels much better and responds much better when doing tricks. There are literally dozens of new tricks added so it helped having better control of your movements and a better response to the analog stick input.
Did I mention all of the new tricks in your bag? I literally couldn’t figure out which to use in each instance because there were so many. Hippy jumps, finger flips, one-footers; you name it and it can be done. Although there are plenty that will be tough to master, it was still fun trying to pull them all off. One of the new features that appeared quite simple in theory but ended up being pretty difficult to get used to was the fact that you can now get off of your skateboard. You can get off and walk up stairs or interact with different objects in the game.
Simple right? Well there were plenty of times that it just didn’t seem to sink in that instead of being frustrated about getting back up the stairs after a failed trick, I could simple hop off my skateboard and walk back up the stairs. It was mind bottling really at how many of us failed to grasp this. Once you learn though, it becomes very useful. You can even pull off a cool move by running and jumping back onto your board.
Something else that was interesting was the way they’ve improved the pedestrians in the game. It’ll be much harder to use them for target practice because they react to your crazy antics now. They’ll get out of the way and even have some very funny stuff to say if you listen in to their conversations. You see pressing the Y button launches your skateboard so just imagine how cruel I was some of you could be.
Another really cool entry was the Hall of Meat. It might sound tasty but I can assure it wasn’t. The Hall of Meat was a collection of my most heinous crashes, bail outs and bone-breaking moments. If you manage to bite it in a most extreme way, then you’ll be rewarded with an entry into the Hall of Meat. It could be on purpose for challenges or just by accident. It takes its toll on you so be careful or you’ll be walking around a bloody mess. This time around you’ll see your scrapes and bruises. It’s no fun being the next skater to tell a scar story on MTV.
I’m also happy to announce that the skate.Reel editor has been updated to include different camera angles to manipulate your replays. It allows you to be more of a video director than ever before. You can adjust any given time line and use any of the three camera settings including the Tripod Camera. The Tripod Camera is used in such a way that you set it up and it tracks you from a stationary position which is unlike the Follow Camera that well, follows you. I can see even more hours of my time being wasted trying to make the perfect replay or the perfect wipeout for all to see.
Overall, there’s a lot of Skate 2 that I’m not able to talk about but hopefully what I was able to share was enough to give a good feel on the game. I wanted to end this with another personal thank you to the Skate 2 Dev Team as well as the Skate Community Manager, Ronald Yatco. You guys rock on levels that should be illegal in some states. I’m looking forward to getting my skatin’ on.
lvl 61!
November 11th, 2008 at 10:19 pm
Man, this is such great news! I just randomly had a hankering for some good, ol’ fashioned Skate 1 today, and finally finished off the few tasks I needed to complete everything in the game. I still have to give EA kudos for the amazing control scheme- I picked it up again and right away was pulling off laser flips, manuals, and whatnot, as if it hadn’t been a few months since I last popped the disc in. It’s so much fun just to mess around (and I even spent over an hour when I first got the game just trying to see how many bones I could break!). It sounds like the team working on Skate 2 is just fostering that concept of playground gameplay, and making this game more exciting than ever with more options for the player to do whatever the hell they want!
Oh, and thank goodness they added a walking feature!
I also heard they made the pedestrians less fall-tastic?
November 12th, 2008 at 2:01 am
i was really hyped about skate when i first saw and played it.
but haven’t played it much when i finally got my hands on it. its a shame actually.
November 12th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Great to here, the inclusion of a damage system with scrapes and bruises is interesting. I’m very happy with the changes they have made to the replay system, which was one of my bigger gripes with the first game. Overall it just appears that EA has added the featues that people wanted. Good stuff!
November 12th, 2008 at 9:53 am
Hey Deacon, good first impressions. Loved the first game and will likely pick up the 2nd at some point, just too many good games fighting for attention right now… Hope you enjoyed your visit to Canadaland.
November 12th, 2008 at 11:30 am
greates ever when i played skate i loved the fact that its not like any shit game like t.h.a.w.or any tony hawk game its just so cool that u flick withthe sticks on the controller i love this game and # 2 is going to be amazing
November 12th, 2008 at 11:58 am
^tony hawk 2 for the psone was pretty awesome though.
just because the latter tony hawk games suck, doesn’t mean that the previous were bad. shortsighted?
November 12th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Deacon,
Glad you had a great time in Vancouver and meeting the dev team. I went to the community event for the original SKATE, back when naysayers were predicting that it couldn’t compete with Tony Hawk. Of course, those of us that played it then knew it would blow the doors off of skater games. I just completed all of SKATE “1″ (both mags, Danny Way compound, X-games, etc) and am very excited to see the new features in SKATE2. The Hall of Meat sounds great, since I’ve had some epic wipeouts that involved faceplants off of overpasses into traffic and my favorite, a headon TEKKEN-like crash into two SUVs at the bottom of a fast hill. (Imagine doll-like flipping through the air, bouncing off one SUV and my body being T-boned by the front of another SUV and you get the idea.
BTW, glad you got to meet “Cuz” and Jeff, since they were amazing to work with on SKATE 1. Is “Cuz” still doing the voices for the Jam sessions in the game, like he did in the original?” Great stuff!
November 12th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Cuz is doing a lot of voicework and he’s planted all over the game…he’s annoying in the game lol but in a good way
November 12th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Thank you for the review decon. I’ve been wanting to pick up a skat game. I loved the first two tony hawks games. But after that, I never liked them and stoped playing them. I have a itch and you have help me reach it.
November 12th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Very cool, enjoyed the first skate quite a bit. Glad they implemented the walking feature though, it does help in giving you more freedom
November 24th, 2008 at 4:12 am
Hey man, I was just reading your write up, I’m one of the moderators on the official Skate/Skate2 forums, just dropped in to say nice article! It was nice meeting you there, SKATE 2 rocks!!
November 24th, 2008 at 8:10 am
what’s up Casey! yeah i had a blast dude! i’ll drop by the Skate forums to say wazzup
January 7th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
[...] you don’t have a clue about Skate 2, then slap yourself and head over to my Skate 2 Hand’s On Impressions. The game is slated to hit store shelves on January 21 so you’ll have plenty of time to [...]