Skate 2 Forum

I'm a big fan of the "skate." series so far. The first game was surprisingly good, despite mass speculation on how well the Flick-It controls would work. I'm not one of those people who complained about how imprecise the motions could be, because I didn't really have that much of a problem with them. It just took some time. Anyway, on to the demo.

The first thing I noticed about this game is how much better some of the animations looked. Both the motion capture and the gameplay animation sets seem much more finely tuned than they did in the first game. The ragdoll dynamics, in particular look much more brutal than they did in the last skate. I think this has to do with the fact that each limb is more loose, and things like ankle and wrist joints move somewhat more realistically. The best part of the ragdoll physics are how a faceplant looks. Holy shit, some of the bails I've made looked downright murderous. The head practically disappears underneath the neck and the body sticking up from the ground.

Another thing I noticed about the demo is how short it actually is. Once you customize your skater, and actually get into the game, there are only about ten minutes altogether for you to freeskate. The timer is at least five minutes shorter than the first skate's demo was. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if it weren't for my next point...

The new walking mechanics take some serious time getting used to. By pressing Y on the controller, you can pick up your deck and walk around. The problem with the walking is that it feels like the first six Tomb Raider games. It's tank-like. The only way to get your character to turn easily or quickly is to use the right stick, as if it were a shooter. And even then, it doesn't allow you to move all that easily. This, coupled with the fact that you need to be facing an object to push or pull it, makes the off-board controls kind of messy. But, like the Flick-It scheme in general, once you get used to it, it kind of becomes second nature. Or at least, I can assume it will. Also, while I'm on the subject of the controls, there is no tutorial or indication of how to pull off a one footer. And, if that weren't enough, they seem to have cut your spin speed in half. This is really annoying, and makes pulling off tech flips and half-cabs from manuals nearly impossible. Hopefully the final product will allow you to upgrade your spin speed.

Overall, this is a decent demo. It's somewhat indicative of the final product, even though it is missing some of the key new components that will supposedly make this sequel that much better than its predecessor. Also, it could've been longer. 3/5

It was an enjoyable demo, but I'm not sure there are enough new things in the game to warrant purchasing the game if you've already played the first skate.. Walking mechanics definitely need so work, although I like how you can drag ramps around.

I'll try it tonight.

i thought the skate 2 demo was good you have to get used to the off the board controls, it took a little time to get used to them. i link the facted that the spins are a little slower makes it more realistic because lets face it it hard to pull a 360 heelflip of the ground. and there is a trick list telling you how to do the boneless and footplants and stuff in the menu of the demo. so all in all i still cant wait to pick up my copy.

I look forward to playing it. I'm glad you can actually get off the board this time. That's one of thing I had been hoping would be added to the sequel. Also, it seems cool you can move ramps around and stuff. Hopefully the on-foot controls work well enough, many of you guys seem to have some problems with them.

Actually, you can skip the video at the end by pressing A. It takes a couple of seconds before it accepts the skip, though. Button mashing works wonders in these situations.

The replay editor is pretty terrible now. They upped the sensitivity on the trigger controls, which makes no sense to me--it's hard to go at a speed between crawling slow and normal speed now. Why fix what wasn't broken?

For a few seconds I was also confused by the fact that you have to press A to actually hop into the editor. The first thing you see when you select the editor from the menu only lets you rewind and play the editor contents. You can do all that from the next screen anyway, so I don't see why this extra layer is there at all, particularly when it wasn't in the first one.

But the worst part about the editor now is the camera controls. Whereas in the first skate you could cycle through the camera while playing back the video to quickly find the most suitable angle, you now have to dive into a menu and pick a type of camera, and then adjust the angle of the camera, and then go all the way back to the main editor screen before you can see how the video flows with the new camera setting.

Although I haven't personally noticed much difference in rotation between this demo and the first game, I've heard other people say that they have more difficulty doing 360s and such now. The easy fix is to just do what a real skater would do and put your legs into it: push the right stick for some extra rotation with your legs instead of relying on the left stick alone. It looks more realistic, too. Who knows how this'll affect the X-Games when you're trying to pull 900s and 1080s, though; it was already hard enough in the first one.

Edit: fun with physics! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85RFXh-h3qs&fmt=22

If you pause it there's a trick guide like the first game.  Doing one foot moves like the fastplant and boneless are achieved by holding LT or RT and pressing like A or X, there's a lot of them actually.

And the on-foot controls are kinda stiff, but really their only purpose is to make getting up stairs easier, allow you to push objects and do acid drops and such.  I think it makes sense though, the game obviously doesn't want you to be walking the whole time, only when it's absolutely necessary.  It's a skating game, they wouldn't want the walking part to eclipse the actual skating.  In one of those last Tony Hawk games I ever played, it was actually more fun for me to run around and flip and shit...that series lost it's focus because it concentrated too little on the actual skating and just tried to add so much unnecessary shit to distract you from the mediocre core gameplay.  I'm convinced that skate. hasn't lost its focus and only made changes where they were important.

I only rented the first skate once (beat it quickly) after playing the demo probably 50 times (and another 25-plus times after i returned the game). I know the first skate demo like the back of my hand. The limit was 30 minutes, now defaults to 5. Doing challenges increases your time by a minute at a time, max. BlackBox pulled an EA with the skate2 demo. Also you cannot adjust the audio levels in this demo, so if you're the type that uses your speakers (headphones) to hear voice chat, you're going to be pausing alot or asking people to repeat themselves often. I hope they at least have that option in the full game.

As far as the actual controls, I will have to play it a few more times. Only got it last night before I slept and haven't played it again since. However it gets points for including shirts and hoodies with the Thrasher: Skate and Destroy logo from the old-school PS1 "realistic" skateboard game from Rockstar that went up against the first THPS. I always felt skate was the reimagining of that series, this kinda proves it.

EDIT: It doesn't seem to have a much deeper library of trick recognition. I want it to see that i did a body shuvit, not a late  fs-shuveit bs-180. However I am glad that you can now land on your feet after screwing up some flip tricks instead of landing on your face no matter what like before.

EDIT2: I see a lot of potential in the new moves and the environment moving for great lines once the game comes out. But the demo time is just too short. Also it looks like the game now uses a slight parallax mapping type of effect that makes the world textures look much more detailed up close. If only it was 1080p or had better texture filtering...

I never played the first skate game but I really enjoyed this demo even though I fucking hate demo's with a time limit.

yeah, I thought it was like that.

I don't know why I never got it.

The "move shit out of your path" mechanic feels ridiculous. At the start  it's like "move the garbage can -- oh by the way we don't believe in FRICTION!"

it's a demo, it's a demo, it's a freaking DEEMOO!!

making note that they don't go over every single thing in store for you leaves you something new to find when you actually buy and play the finished product. i can't think of any game that gives you everything for nothing. fps' don't show you all of the guns or enemies, right? riiight.

and complaining that there's no audio option? uhm.. there's a lot of options that aren't there. what's the last game that didn't give you the option of changing the levels? sheesh.



the replay editor, on the other hand, i DO have a really big problem with. seems like they could have given you the default video angles from the first game and then let you fully tweak it the way it's set up now. but, maybe and hopefully, that's exactly what i'll be getting once i pick up my preorder.

I used to be big into the skateboarding tony hawk games, the undergrounds, maybe I will try this out.

i wont get it i think. the animations were epic though