Problems do remain but it's still the better skateboarding game
I do admit that i never played the first Skate, but the demo stayed on my hard drive for over a year as i got addicted to the new, interesting control scheme and focus on realism. When the demo for Skate 2 was released i was disappointed by the extreme short time limit to skate around. I knew then and there that i will own Skate 2 and now i do my opinion on the game has changed.
The game starts you off after the events of Skate It for the Wii as San Vanelona has been rebuilted after an earthquake and the player is released from prison taken from 'The Blues Brothers' featuring many of the skaters in the game with the awesome opening real life cutscene. The player is driven away from the prison by 'Reda' who was your friend, mouth and camera man from the first game and he tells you that the city of San Vanelona was rebuilt by 'Mongocorp' into New San Vanelona. Securtiy has been beefed up in the downtown area, many of the good spots has been 'capped' and it's your job to retake the city for skateboarding. The story pretty much starts and stops right there as you want to get skateboarding back to NSV and you once again need to get on the cover of 'Skateboarding Mag' and 'Thrasher' as well as other events.
Gameplay has been tweaked from the first Skate. Most obvious is a new selection of tricks including footplants, lip tricks and a modified grab system with grinding and flips staying pretty much the same. Once again the problem of too many tricks on the right thumbstick with tricks being almost identical (eg 360 flip vs 360 shuvit). There are some controller weirdness as sometimes when landing a trick i got into a 'infinite manual' and can go on forever without touching the controller which is given me a 400m manual record. Also new is the 'Create-A-Spot' feature which let you move around loose objects like rails and kickers and saving them to put up for download with a score to beat. It is fun making these spots but when your off you board, the player's character moves like a tank in which he can only turn while standing still and he can't sidestep. Another new gameplay feature is the new Halls of Meat minigame that features with the new ragdoll physics which score you based on your failure. After a really violent fall the Halls of Meat will show you all your broken bones, top speed, how many flips, how many objects you hit and so on. An objective system called the Annals of Meat were added but do not give to much reward to actively complete it. One more of the needed improvements is the Film Editor, it stays the same most from the first Skate but tweaked so you can split up footage into multiple clips using different cameras all which give a 360 degree angle. Only problem is downloading the flim gives it out in a Flash Video Player format which needs to have a 3rd party program to convert it to an wmv or avi. Also the graphics editor on there website let's you make your own grahpics for your custom hat, deck and t-shirt. Problems with this includes the colours from the editor do not mix up with the in-game colours giving a box outline and the criminally short text box.
NSV has given you some new objectives to complete such as spot photo shots, death races and so on. The extreme sport game curse still remains as most of the objectives would make you want to cut out your eyes in a rage because of bailing or wrong flip or whatever. The most fun would have to be the death races which pits you againest 5 other skaters down steep hills and curvy roads. Through the game while giving the feelling of 'oh god I'm gonna crash' the camera will start to shake out of control and will be most of the reasons why you hit that tree or car. But that will not prepare for one of Skate 2's worst features, S.K.A.T.E. To realise how awful this objective is, let me put it this way. There are 2 S.K.A.T.E objectives in the whole career mode and it is still one of the worst parts about Skate 2. What it is? it's a objective in which you verse a skater or 2 in a 'land this exact trick' game, so what it's really doing is taking one of Skate 2's major problems and making it mandatory to finish the game. One of the S.K.A.T.E objectives is to verse 2 pros at this but because they are pros they land the trick every single time and if one person bails (mosty likey you) then setting the trick stays with the AI opponents, i had to resort to a gltich to get past that part to move on.
Graphics does looks pretty in some spots but it's not to the standards of most games out today. Blury textures are seen frequenty and AI characters who roam the streets often move into your way then out of it. The excellent animation from the first Skate returns and gives you a very realistic look to most of the tricks. Another problem with Skate 2 is spawning, often when you bail on a trick you often spawn near where you were but it's sometimes not the case. For example say you want to clear a mega ramp but don't quite land it, the spawn system might spawn you where you hit the ground or on top of the ramp or at the bottom of the ramp or right on the edge of the ramp. It does become annoying. But the biggest problem with Skate 2 is no question the trick physics. While the ragdoll looks better in Skate 2 doing tricks can often leave you either mad or confused. In real life if you did a flip trick into a walk you would crash into it, in Skate 2 quite often you would just bounce right off it and still landing the trick. Walking along and getting back on your board to then instantly fall off it gets annoying. I even had a moment of really messed up stuff when i fell out my board, landing on my feet, pressing Y to get back on my board only to have my board come flying back at my and hit my in the face.
Multiplayer takes an idea from Burnout Paradise and gives you 'Freeskate' challenges like doing 500 points in one spot or flip tricking over 3 other players. Finding a game is hard because the search makes you choose from a location and there isn't a 'Everywhere' location. Also in Skate 2 is party play which is a 'pass the controller around' multiplayer game which gives a few options from the online multiplayer like a trick contest and a Halls of Meat contest. Online basically gets all the Career mode objectives into multiplayer forms.
Skate 2 is not for the completionest, it is for the type of person who says 'I'm just gonna roll around and skate this spot'. So if your that type of person and can look past the anger and physic funkyness then i would recomend this game to you.
