Giant Bomb Video Game News

Downloading right now.

I am going to download this.....now.

only for gold members?!  forget that shit. 

I'll give it a shot later tonight.

A nice little aperitif. Definitely picking it up, I loved the first skate. Though I must agree that running around on foot is a little too stiff.

First, let me get this out of the way: I loved skate. It's easily the best skateboarding game I have ever played. Everything about it hit all the right notes; The controls were simple to use yet difficult to perfect, the tone was very realistic, and the overall presentation and gameplay was top-notch.

So, naturally, I was pretty excited to play the Skate 2 demo. How does it stack up to the original?

Not. At. All.

To start off with, you are greeted with an intro that's full of cheesy stuff about living in the ghetto after getting out of jail or something. Instantly, this reminds me of the later Need for Speed games or something, and that's certainly not a good thing. Then, I see the Black Box logo. Black Box made Need for Speed Undercover, the latest and worst in the Need for Speed series. It was plagued with the same problems, storytelling-wise. STOP KILLING MY GAMES, BLACK BOX.

So, when you jump into the demo, you create a character. Although it may seem easier to use than the original's, it is most certainly not. It's not nearly as customizable, and there's only about ten hairstyles to choose from. And if you accidentally skip something? Too bad. The game won't let you go back and change it.

It then drops you into the gameplay. Your cameraman is the same from skate., and although it's apparently been several years, and THE WHOLE CITY HAS CHANGED, he still has the same voice and manages to be more annoying than ever. He was kind of charming in the original game; The character that thinks he's the best person in the world, but a bigger nerd than anyone else in the city. Here, he's just obnoxious, screaming things like "HOLY COW, AAAAH, GAHHH," every time you bail. I'm not even kidding. He really says "Holy cow."

You can now get off your skateboard and go up staircases this time around, but that doesn't feel like it should. The controls for walking are incredibly stiff, and quite frankly, awkward. You can also move stuff around, but that doesn't ever feel right either.

The skaters are also more punk-acting this time. They're just kind of big jerks that you can't really like. In the first game, they were like they are (presumably) in real life. Here, though, they're just stereotypes of themselves.

Speaking of stereotypes, that is my biggest problem with the game. The first game nailed a realistic setting, and it really set it leagues ahead of the Tony Hawk games. Here, they changed all the characters to what the Tony Hawk games made them out to be, and they did the same with the setting, story, and gameplay. They took the park-editing stuff right from 2007's Proving Grounds, and they manage to be somehow worse here. It's hard to place something where you want it to be, and once you do, it never feels satisfying. There just isn't a whole lot of customization. There's no way to move stuff around where you want it; There are always boundaries keeping you from doing so.

On top of that, I can tell this game has a "crazy" kind of vibe to it. In the full game, you'll be able to customize your own bails. In fact, they don't even have the excellent ragdoll physics from the first in the game. The bails in this one are just plain lame, and watching them doesn't ever make you feel uneasy. Also, the controls feel somehow sloppy in this one. I don't know what it is, but they feel a lot more loose than the super-tight controls of the original.

What went wrong? I mean, I'm still going to at least rent the final product when it comes out in a couple of weeks, but if I didn't know better, I would think it's a Tony Hawk game. The game's mellow and realistic representation of skateboarding as a sport and lifestyle that was seen in the original is gone in favor of stupid stereotypes, and the gameplay is nowhere near on the same level of the first game. All in all, I'm very disappointed with what I've played of it.

Wow... after reading the comment from onemanfreakshow... I can't help but wondering if we're playing the same games. With the exception of the dialogue almost everything is better so far (though I haven't run into anyone acting like a jerk yet). To be fair, the dialogue in the first game wasn't good either. I don't tend to play skateboarding games for a Shakespearean deconstruction of quantum theory though...

I'm tired of people being overly conservative when it comes to game design.  It's like the only difference people can tolerate is the addition of the number 2.  First of all, you're only so attached to the first game's design because it's the FIRST GAME, stop being so sentimental...allow for a game to progress unless you just want to be playing Halo for the rest of your life.  I don't understand the "more of the same is better" philosophy.  Everything different about skate 2 is an improvement.  First of all, the frame rate is INCREDIBLE.  The bails look more realistic, the ability to get off your board is an added convenience, just because the Tony Hawk games supposedly started sucking after they allowed this feature doesn't mean the same for skate. (by the way, I thought the Tony Hawk games started to suck shit way before they added that feature anyway).  Honestly, I don't know why there weren't any handplants or fastplants in the first game, so the addition of these moves just makes sense to me.  Overall, the realism and challenge factor hasn't diminished, everything that made the first game what it is is still there...the replay editor, the skate community, etc.  And also, I don't understand complaining about the characters being "jerks," grow some balls kid,  I've never heard anyone complain about a game being too "rude," that's like complaining that a horror movie is "too scary" or some shit. 

By the way, the "ragdoll" physics made many of the bails in the first one look ridiculous, have you ever seen anyone bail in real life?  You're not just gonna go completely limp if you're 20 feet in the air, you're gonna flail like a madman and try to put your hands out in front of you or whatever you can do to lessen the impact.  It's the realism that made the first what it was, so I don't see how adding to that is detrimental.  And it's not a "park editing" tool, you're simply just moving objects around like you would in real life, if you were skating and trying to set something up.  I shouldn't care what anyone else thinks, but none of your complaints make any sense to me.  Plus, you're comparing like a 15 minute demo to a full game.  It's ridiculous to say that the pros are "stereotypes of themselves,"  why would the skaters want to represent themselves as stereotypes, and what stereotype are you referring to?  They're not going around saying "radical" and drinking Mountain Dew the whole time...plus how can you justify any of this with like the 20 lines of dialogue that are in the demo?  Whatever, it's your loss if you can't see the greatness of it.  But then again I myself couldn't see why everyone went so apeshit over Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead...both were very mediocre in my opinion.

Yeah its another horrid Gold only demo...*sigh*

I'm getting it regardless of demo but, uuugh.

The first skate demo was the way to do a demo. 30 mins of a medium sized skate park with all the tricks in the game was awesome. So awesome that I never felt I needed to buy the retail game and could just play the demo a thousand times. Now they've gone and pulled an EA and limited it to 7 minutes of actual gameplay maximum. Fuckin EA.

EDIT: Anybody notice the shirts/hoodies that had the Thrasher Skate and Destroy logo featured on them? Now that's a proper throwback to the game that kicked off this whole realistic skateboard game phenomenon.

MrKlorox said:

"The first skate demo was the way to do a demo. 30 mins of a medium sized skate park with all the tricks in the game was awesome.

So awesome that I never felt I needed to buy the retail game and could just play the demo a thousand times.

Now they've gone and pulled an EA and limited it to 7 minutes of actual gameplay maximum. Fuckin EA.

EDIT: Anybody notice the shirts/hoodies that had the Thrasher Skate and Destroy logo featured on them? Now that's a proper throwback to the game that kicked off this whole realistic skateboard game phenomenon."

That's why they paired it down to 7 minutes, and it's not like you can demand anything from a FREE demo. It showed off what you can do in the game, some new stuff, and it did it well. First people complain about the length of full retail games, then they complain about how they finished a game on rental, now people are complaining about a FREE PRODUCT? Ridiculous.

You've got issues. I never complained that I beat it in a rental. I mentioned it. My only complaint was that 7 minutes is ridiculously short. Also it's actually 5 minutes unless you complete challenges, which add less than a minute each time.

MrKlorox said:

"You've got issues. I never complained that I beat it in a rental. I mentioned it. My only complaint was that 7 minutes is ridiculously short. Also it's actually 5 minutes unless you complete challenges, which add less than a minute each time."

No i'm saying the general gaming complaints about length. People complain that some games are 5 hours long regardless of quality, some even complain they beat rentals and feel cheated out of there money. And now people are complaining the length of a demo that gives you enough time to show you everything? That's just... the demo is not there for you to not buy the game, it's the opposite. That's why it's called a demo. It's not the full version of a game.

The first skate demo was good because it did essentially just that. Showed you almost everything and gave you time to get a groove going before it kicked you out. Skate2 demo doesn't do this. It doesn't really show much of the new features and starts off on a note of pressure to finish challenges or get booted from the game. That's not the relaxed attitude that is associated with games like this.

Also there were many circumstances that lead me to never buying the first skate. If XBL wasn't the fickle bandwagon that it is, I wouldn't have to plan out my purchases months in advance to make sure I own the same games my online crews are playing. By the time I could buy the first one, my friends were into the next big thing. Screw that.

Death_Burnout said:

"Yeah its another horrid Gold only demo...*sigh*

I'm getting it regardless of demo but, uuugh."

*GASP* A Silver member?! I thought we sent you all to the labor camps!
That whole Gold/Silver demo release things is such bullshit on par with the Killzone 2 pre-order demo shit.
Whoever decided that should be dragged out in the street and shot