skate

I'm looking forward to this too. I played Tony Hawk for so long that I worry it won't be as mindlessly pleasurable and that I won't have the patience to learn the new controls and the new way of seeing the game-- But I'll try it. The character customization sounds cool too. NWA t-shirt?!?

By about THUG, those games started to give me motion-sickness. skate looks like one more reason for me to buy an XBox 360.

i dunno if this will give you LESS motion sickness! the camera is pretty intense.

I really like this demo. Must have played it through about ten times now! It seems a lot less frustrating than Tony Hawk, where you could bust out a massive combo for about a minute, only to fuck it up at the end due to some twat in a car driving round the corner too fast. On this, it's an achievement just to get the board to stick to something.

I'm sure I'll pick it up when it's out, though Stranglehold has XBox priority for me.

Stranglehold is awesome. I know people say it's too short and too samey, but what it's samey with is EXACTLY WHAT I LOVE TO DO IN VIDEOGAMES. I think I'll be playing this game a bunch of times. I already have to restart, because yesterday I was playing while the plumber was over fixing my sink and he was so bugged out by the game he had to play for an hour, and accidentally fucked up my savegame!

There's a lot of love in the level design, too. Plenty of really cool easter eggs, like the movie theatre you can wander into on the first board.

stranglehold rules. the skate demo is really fun but the voice over guy needs to shut the fuck up.

i broke skate...

http://skate.share.ea.com/profiles/19265/posts/129791.aspx

Man, I wish I had been still testing EA games for a living when they were working on that game, because a system like that one would make it SO easy to show the bugs (instead of trying to explain them in a text file)

I can't believe they don't have some kind of video recorder thing built into the playtesting builds! You have to DESCRIBE where invisible walls are and stuff?

most games, yes. detailed directions on where to start and how to get there. some games were a bit more sophisticated, like a certain driving game with a stupid storyline. apparnetly you could give them xyz co-ordinates as they showed on the screen in some (earlier) builds but later, near-retail builds you still needed to give shitty driving direcitons. they didn't even have an overhead map for us to point it out on!

Anyhow, I'm really enjoying this game. I put in a bunch of time over the weekend. The city they've created is pretty amazing. It's very, very large - and each area seems unique - it's not cookie-cutter at all. I've been having a great time, just skating around and exploring. Some of the challenges so far have been pretty hard. You just have to try to do the same trick over and over and over again, sometimes - but it is actually really satisfying when you finally manage to pull off one that has been driving you crazy. Since most of the challenges are really short - it's not too bad to fail over and over again. There seems to be a decent variety in the kinds of things to do too. I just won my first race - which I think may be my favorite mode. Barely fooled around with the online stuff - other than some lag - it seems surprisingly good. I definitely want to do more online racing soon & maybe try out some of the other modes. The game seems to have a lot of depth & is also surprisingly relaxing to play. So far it seems like the best purchase I've made in a while.

How relaxing is what I love about it the most. It has a great curve-- you seem to be getting better organically just by goofing around having fun in the areas, which kind of should be the most important thing in a skating game-- not some Killer Instinct style 35-button combos.

Oooh, really looking forward to this coming out. I'll pick it up right away. Should be a nice wind down after the blaow-blaow-blaow that is John Woo's Tablesweep. I can honestly say I've enjoyed diving over fences and shooting gangsters in the crotch more than anything on the 360 so far, but I don't think I'll need another shooter for a while!

I know what you mean about the glut of shooters, but I can think of a couple more soon I can't skip. In particular, I'm really looking forward to the orange box (having never played half life before)...

Anyhow - here's the weirdest glitch video I've seen in skate...

http://skate.share.ea.com/profiles/2101/posts/117056.aspx

If I am bored of Tony Hawk, what does this game give me that TH doesn't? I am curious but skeptical.

The Stranglehold demo is nice but I would rather that you didn't automatically slide over everything. The game is chaotic to a point of being incomprehensible at times, a complaint I had with Viewtiful Joe.

This game and Tony Hawk literally feel nothing alike. The mechanic, the goals, and just the feel of the game are SO different. It's like the difference between an arcadey sports game and a really good simulator. Also skate is so crazily PEACEFUL. Tony Hawk I always found a tense game, especially in the Bam era.

I played the demo last night and LOVED IT.

The game just feels much more like you're actually making the guy skate than TH. If a trick is hard to do, it is HARD TO DO.

Minor quibble would be that it's too easy to stay in a manual, I guess, or that grinds seem to happen automatically.

They happen as automatically as makes sense-- you line up the board and ollie onto a rail. And if you think manuals are easy try landing an ollie in one!

i downloaded the demo for this on the weekend. i want it too.

Hit a bit of a wall with this last night & I don't think I'm too far into it (maybe halfway?). Suddenly all the challenges I found were IMPOSSIBLE.

http://skate.share.ea.com/profiles/18869/posts/151320.aspx

by the way this game is fucking bonkers; it got me to buy a 360 on reputation and promise alone and WOW is it ever good. REALLY looking forward to getting setup w/ Live for it, too.

I bought this game yesterday and am really enjoying it, although it is definitely true that the game's strength is just riding around doing tricks, not the missions/storyline.

I'm almost done with this, with only one film challenge left. Except it's as hard as rescuing Lance Vance underwater under a dam infested with electric plants which is due to explode any minute. Whilst fighting off Ghosts n' Gobins. Naked.

What do you have to do in it?

I'm stuck on the transfer through the window and something else I can't remember. Also, all the film challenges are too hard for me now. 4500 points in 30 seconds AND I have to do x, y, and z in the process? Cannot do. :(

5500 points in 30 seconds, in a no-skate zone. Got 5300 today and I swear you could see the profanity ejecting from my mouth all over the telly.

Somehow I lucked the window one first time. I totally fucked it, but it let me have it anyway! Much like several of the "manual on this" ones, where I just landed a grind on the corner by accident.

This is possibly the most frustrating but stubbornly addictive game on the 360 so far.

What kind of moves are you pulling off where you get 5300 in 30 seconds? Is it a bunch of regular stuff in a line, or are you doing frontflips and shit?

360 Hardflips seem to be the way forward, with a bit of a spin, into a grind. Then some silly manuals and shuvits. It's the maddest thing. I guess when you get into 3x multiplier it really helps. Bear in mind I can't really do these things on command. They're one in a million.

Still haven't finished this challenge :(

Yeah - as I started to advance in the game and started to see how many points you had to get on some of those things I started to get a bit discouraged - I'm not sure I want to even try that hard. Some of the tricks too, I just started to find a bit too frustrating to pull off. Still I want to get back to it - I'd like to at least be able to open the x-games thing. Since I haven't played for a few weeks, I wonder if I've lost whatever minimal skill I'd perhaps developed?

Played this a bunch again last weekend (or was it the weekend before that?) and made a bunch of progress (beat the two x-games challenges, for example), but overall, I think I've had my fill of the game - the precision challenges are just too impossible. The idea of the way the game controls is neat, but they've had to map too much stuff to the sticks - I really find it almost impossible to pull off (consistently) the trickier moves. The two challenges I spent the most time on and just can't seem to pull off are the 360 flip to hubba and Rob and Big's 360 Flip and land in an FS Crooked on the bench. It kind of runs the fun.

ruins the fun

http://jl13.com/images/flickit1.jpg

http://jl13.com/images/flickit2.jpg

The two challenges I spent the most time on and just can't seem to pull off are the 360 flip to hubba and Rob and Big's 360 Flip and land in an FS Crooked on the bench.

I am stuck on these very same two challenges (and also the through-the-window transfer), and haven't picked the thing up in a few weeks. Very frustrating, but I don't regret the purchase.

The difference between the Varial Kickflip and the 360 Flip are so minute that I always wind up driven to violence, especially if I run into a pedestrian (I HATE PEDESTRIANS SO MUCH).

giving this another whirl!!

damn this is hard

Whatever you do, don't play on XBOX Live unless you want to be thoroughly embarrassed by some annoying Beavis kid.

This game has kept GTA 4 and Halo 3 out of my 360 for the last fortnight.
I'm totally rubbish, but it's got a strange combination of 'just one more go' with the challenges and being a great game to just chill out with doing random tricks as you wander around the streets.

Yeah, it's a really nice game to zone out to.

never played this but the demo for the sequel is pretty cool.

I'm playing Skate 2 tonight, I will be sure to give my impressions.

I'm downloading the demo right now (it's HUGE). I liked the first game, and it sounds like 2 is a better game, but it also sounds like it's so similar to the first one that I'm not sure there's any point to it, i.e. I'm not sure I want to basically play through that whole game again.

It's pretty likely that I'll play Skate 2 more than any other game in 2009. Skate was such a great game to just zone out to, and if they improved the sandbox (which it seems is the case) and added walking/lip tricks, it will be hard to get me to stop playing.

I really love the concept and vibe of this game but executing the moves was far too hard for me so in the end I just gave up : /

Dude you are a gamer you can totally do it.

guys is it true all you do in this is make 20 sec "films"?

Played the demo - confirming my gut instincts - feels (basically) exactly the same as the original. Good game, but I'm not feeling any need to pick up the sequel. It looks a little better, I guess, but not much. There are some weird things about it too - framerate still felt a little hitchy - and while it's cool you can now get off your board, it's weird that you can only walk forward & that when you hit "y" the board magically flies back to you (instead of you walking over to it and picking it up). Moving objects also felt kind of clunky...

the framerate is a solid 60fps now I read?

you walk too slow when you get off the board I thought : /

it's nice you can change cameras this time tho why they omitted that from the demo I don't know

i've played this demo a lot, definitely getting this. Took me a while to get used to the controls and the way the game is in comparison to Tony Hawk's (i.e. you ollie with the right stick, you can't do stupidly mental strings of tricks, 1080 double kickflip backflip nosebone with grind for 50 metres, you have to actually land your grinds yourself etc.) but now I'm really enjoying it, especially the grinds.

Based on 2 hours of playing the game last night, I honestly think skate 1 is better. There are a lot of glitchy things that make me think the game was rushed to retail. I'm surprised by how poorly they implemented walking and dragging. It looks very nice, and I'm sure I'll play it a fuckload, but I'm a little disappointed.

been playing a lot of this lately for some reason while waiting for Infamous to hit; I really love it but ye gods does it make you confront how shitty you are at it. plus I haven't even played skate since I sold my 360 so I'm extra-crappy at the moment; I don't think I've even earned a single trophy. still, though, it's great.

picked this up for a tenner

so good

skate.2 tht is

I finished it in like two days. :/

I really want to get this game on stupid Goozex... sent liek 5 games, still gotten 0

Also, I changed my username in response to your new one cozwn

Where did you manage to find this for a tenner? I just finished Skate a couple of weeks ago, and am ready for Skate 2, but refuse to pay above £20 for games :)

it ws a tenner at amazon but it's gone back up to £12.50 now

I managed to get it for a tenner by buying Skate and the GAME employee putting the wrong disc/manual in the box. Probably not an approach to rely on though.

how did u like skate, craigg?

Thanks for the Amazon tip! managed to get it for £15.99, which is still within my £20 max price. I really enjoyed skate; I thought it was shorter than I'd hoped when I was nearing the end, then realised that I hadn't noticed the 'Thrasher' magazine stuff and was actually only approaching half way! It's surprisingly big (well, it really should be - it can't be that difficult to make 'missions' for it as a developer).

I didn't even mind just getting Skate after playing the demo of Skate 2, as the only things that bothered me being missing were the hand plants. Hoping the second one is a bit tougher, as once you learned to Christ Air + spin you could do pretty much every challenge if you got stuck trying to do it 'legitimately'. On the swimming pool jam I managed to front flip off the roof and land doing the 'coffin', which is without a doubt my proudest moment - though I didn't get anywhere near as many points as it deserves.

In retrospect, it shows how infrequently I shop when I consider Amazon a 'tip'...

htf do u do manuals? like if I want to do a bs tail it's says to do a qcf motion w/the right stick: in the air or when I'm on the ledge or what?

not manuals, sorry, grinds

ok I thk I figured it out... u do an ollie then while in the air and lining up to grind, u gently do the qcf (don't flick else you'll tweak the board or whtever those are called) and land in the specific grind

hard

also who is the wee guy who talks to you all the time? voice in yr head?

Just got Skate 2 and played it a bit yesterday. I guess I must have largely played Skate with the sound down as I didn't notice that dude talking constantly. The specific grind ones are hard. There's one in Skate where you have to do a 360 flip to some specific grind. Shit took me about an hour, which I figure must literally be thousands of failed attempts.

Loving the way your guy slowly (or very quickly, actually) gets bloody as you fall over lots in Skate 2. Nice little touch. (maybe it did this in the first one, but my guy was dressed like a total goon, so I wouldn't have noticed.

also who is the wee guy who talks to you all the time? voice in yr head?

Your cameraman! He's kinda annoying.

I put in Skate 2 for the first time in awhile and noticed that they'd added some spots to the game. Nice little touch to keep the game fresh.

Oh nice new spots. Might give it a spin when i get my xbox fixed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pVETXRpQo0

I like the 'crews' that get together to edit realistic parts, it's pretty sick. Also Guy Mariano's lakai part in skate:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_NzxrkuhIA
i opened the real part in another window, he's even got a lot of the clothes matching and everything. this must have taken the kid ages!

skate.3 announced

It's funny because I was finally feeling like it had been long enough since the original skate came out that I was starting to feel ready to pick up skate 2. Now I don't know - maybe I should just wait until 3. It looks like maybe they've built a new city this time too?

yeah, it's seemingly a new city and the game has a co-op bent?

Think I'm going to rent the next one instead of buying it, given that I finished 2 in like two days.

man f this, so hard.

oh, new Skate in a new city will be awesome. Looking fwd.

really beginning to dislike this, controls are so unforgiving, everything is too hard to line up, too hard to time, pools/halfpipes are incomprehensible. "pumping" works how?

At some point it became really easy for me, so maybe just give it time?

this isn't really all that difficult. Except for on Xbox live where everyone completely annihilated me when i tried to play it.

oh yeah and also what polyphonic said. How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

yeah, I agree w/goole, I think this game is nails hard but eventually it just seems to click

try rolling out the moves quickly instead of inaccurately flicking them

Hardcore mode dramatically alters the physics in the game and tunes them down to a really realistic level, so not only do your tricks pop way lower than in normal mode but your speed is cut way down as well. It should take at least 5 pushes with your foot to get to a decently fast speed, so you will mostly be hitting those rails and ledges at a more realistic speed with 3 or so pushes. You can still ollie somewhat high if you flick it hard enough but it is a little more challenging to get a lot of air. With the physics change comes less grind magnetism. Meaning, everything that is grind-able is way harder to get on. It won't magically suction you to that spot to grind just because you are in proximity with it, you literally will have to line up your trick and land exactly on to the ledge or rail or bank that you are trying to grind on.

Not only is it extremely difficult even for a seasoned Skate veteran like myself but it just makes the game so much more rewarding when you do land that trick that you have been trying to nail for the past half an hour. I cannot stress how much different the game feels when put into hardcore mode. Overall it adds a huge sense of accomplishment even with the simplest tricks or gaps. The physics are tuned down so much that you can actually fail a kick flip on flat ground, something that was not possible in the last two games. That in itself is something a lot of skateboarding realism fans will love. It actually feels like skateboarding—although with a controller—but it nails the realism with hardcore mode.

hmmmm

are your opponents similarly handicapped?

Yeah, do not want punishing physics for my dude while Danny Way pops 4 feet of air from a stand still...

psyched for this.

So their latest video shows that Skate 3 finally has a customize your own skate park feature. Looks pretty cool; you can share your skate park with the community (more importantly, download loads of skate parks made by people with the patients to piss around with level builders), and you can challenge people to come to your park for a jam. You can also, when free skating, dump objects like ramps, rails, etc, wherever you like to improve a location. All looking pretty sweet.

hippyjump

SKATE 3 DEMO coming April 15th to both XBOX Live and PSN.

STILL PSYCHED!

hmm, demo not particularly thrilling. Hardcore mode is pretty hard, i guess.

Yeah, there wasn't a lot going on in that demo, huh? Just downloaded it and gave it a whirl. Seems like much more of the same, which means I'll prolly buy it, but I'll wait til it's £20-£25 I reckon. Love the new damage indicators when you smash yourself and you go all x-ray though. nice touch.

gotta admit - I can't even drum up enough interest this time around to download and try out the demo for 3. For the most part I really enjoyed the first game, but yearly sequels seem completely pointless here & it just looks pretty much like they want you to buy the same game again. This series is the perfect example of how quickly a fresh, new approach can get completely stale, unfortunately.

such a great franchise doesn't deserve this treatment, I'd love if they at least took a couple of years between iterations and fully fleshed out their new ideas

When Skate came out, the thing that was so refreshing about it is that it felt much more like a simulation of skateboarding than the arcade style version of Tony Hawk. But now they add this bailing mini-game that is honestly less realistic than Tony Hawk even. Hey, throw yourself off a building and then dive headfirst into a dumpster for extra points! Turn yourself into a flying squirrel by holding your arms out!

I'm not sure it won't be fun, and hopefully they'll fix the graphics (especially of the characters, who looked terrible), but the demo definitely made me wonder. Think I'll rent this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1Acngq-das&feature=youtu.be

playing the skate3 demo got me back into playing skate2. and i'm into it! still hard as hell tho.

they really don't expect you to have all of those tricks at your fingertips, right? i basically look up what i need to do for a given challenge and then try to execute it. if i just go i end up doing the same things over and over again. and some of the challenges are damn near impossible. i always feel like i'm just half-assing my way through things -- getting my thumb to do the same thing consistently is basically beyond me i think.

but still, i'm really liking it. frustrating but it has me coming back. i'm excited for 3!

I think I'm more hyped at the rumours of a Skate 4 than I was about the recent Fallout teaser/rumours.

i think i'm more hyped at the prospect of gifs of hilariously janky physics in a potential skate 4 than i was about the recent skate 4 rumours

I think if they can combine the traditional janky physics of the Skate series with the revolutionary jankiness of Mass Effect Andromeda we could be in for a real treat

next-gen jank

next-jank