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

I haven't tried it yet.

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 was hoping the walking would work well.

D'oh.

I'll try it tonight.

Noting beats the Crackdown Demo

Yeah, I found the controls for foot manipulation. However, I'm not saying you need to do a 360 off the ground, I'm saying you should still be able to pull off a successful half-cab from a manual.

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.

I liked the demo, though I too wish it was as long as the first; at least it doesn't kick you out to the dashboard (though it *does* make you watch a long video). The inclusion of the party mode in the demo was fun. You can have a bunch of guys and one controller doing hall of meat challenges and own the spot. I like the spot they picked... it really makes me want to get out into the city and play it a *lot* more.

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 demo certainly got me even more excited about skate.2 that just the 12 videos EA Black Box has released so far. To me the flick it controls seem to feel "tighter". In the original skate. if you tried to just do a flat out ollie, you most likely did a kick/heelflip, and when you wanted to do some tech flips such as 360 flips, hard flips, etc, you most likely did a 360 shove it. Now it seems like just pulling off ollies and tech flips come with much more precision than in the previous skate.

Lining up grinds also seem to be a bit more streamlined in the demo as well. A major problem in the first skate was that lining up certain grinds were a bit rough with the camera angle being so low to the ground. Now the game kinda snaps your skater to the nearest rail\ledge even moreso than in the previous version. I didn't find it to be too jarring of a feature, and lets me focus on the actual grind im going to do. The same goes for airs. Now when you launch off of a vert ramp, the game subtlely guides your skater to the piece of tranistion you want to land on. While in theory it sounds kinda lame and cheap, but in practice it just makes the game flow tons better, and it pretty transparent.

The pace of the game does seem a bit slower, but maybe thats a good thing. What I really liked about the orignial skate. was that it was more about the actual trick you pulled off, not how many you can string together. Cutting down the speed a little certainly adds to thinking out your lines more, and really valuing the tricks you do pull off.

Visually, the game looks heaps better. Somehow the dudes at EA Black Box were able to make Skate 2 look better, and yet make it run at a pretty solid 60 fps. New San Vanelona looks a lot less shinier this go round, giving things a less sterlized and gritty look. Even your skater isn't free from being clean 100% of the time. I found that the more I bailed my clothes and body would get muffed up.

Only downer was the demo timer. The original skate demo just dropped you into a skate park with 30 minutes to just mess around. Skate 2 demo only grants about 10 minutes or so of gameplay time, while taking on a customization section at the begining. But hey, it's only a demo. I'm more than ready to log in some serious hours into Skate 2 come January 23rd.

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

I really liked the fact that I could view my replay from any angle, but now saving replays is just a pain.

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 was seriously disappointed by the demo. I don't think it was nearly as good (overall) as the original game. The constant interruptions for that meatbag or whatever thing were annoying as fuck, the new line tally is less noticeable and annoying to look out for while you're trying to skate. The draggable items seemed rather pointless, like they intend for you to complete their original designs by moving them instead of making your own (the big box in the middle?). The walking controls were balls. It just doesn't seem to reach a level of fun anywhere close to the original Skate. And the playground for the (much shorter) demo sucked. I will not be buying the game now.

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...

The problem I had with the demo was that it was so chock full of skateboarding cliches in the dialogue and characters.

I admit, I only played the demo for the first skate, but being able to just free skate for 20 minutes felt great, as opposed to some douches yelling "sick" and "fresh" and just generally being lame constantly.

I guess I just want another THPS4, where I don't have a guided career so much as just an open world with various quests.

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

@GHT: You basically described the first skate in your last sentence.

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!"

For those complaining about all the dialogue in the demo, I'm going to assume that isn't going to be much of a problem in the full game. If you really wanted to, I'm sure you could just skip all that and just, ya know, skate.

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.

*runs to xbox 360

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

"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."

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

I really enoyed the demo, so much so that I've cancelled my Killzone 2 order and am using the money to order this instead. Just wish I knew a little bit more about the multi-player modes... Also speaking of demo's Halo Wars demo Feb 5th! :D

Played it at my mates house (He has the 360 and I have the PS3) and its great. It feels almost exactly like the first one (which is good), the turn speed works well I think. I could understand people saying dont buy it if you have the original (I think you should buy it anyways, just because the new city looks great) but I dont own the original, so Ill be picking this up regardless.

I just got done playing the demo right now and it reminded me of how much I loved the original Skate, but I do have a few issues with the demo. My biggest issue is that the off-board walking around feels a bit weird to me, but it's definitely better than not having the option at all. Actually that's pretty much my only complaint with the demo so far...I can't wait to play the full version, but I have no idea when I'll be able to actually pick it up.

I still play the first Skate. myself. They just put so much stuff in the game to skate off of... it's almost impossible to do everything you could do. I'm *still* finding spots to skate in it. So far in the 8 times I've played the demo, I've already found a metric tonne of new ways to skate half pipes with the what they've added (try and handplant that high catwalk in the skatepark. ;) )

I had difficulty navigating the new camera editor at first as well. Though after I read the instructions it made perfect sense. It might not be as easy to just flip off a bunch of quick replays with stock camera angles, but it didn't take me very long to set up the angles I wanted with the follow camera. The TRIPOD option is awesome though! To me this seems a lot more like a feature that they are beefing up for people who liked making videos with the first game. There was a lot of stuff you could do with it if you wanted ( ttp://www.gamespot.com/users/Rasgueado/video_player?id=InBlk2b-5b8EvT7Z ), and I'm even MORE excited about what I can do with it now. Especially since there are a lot more moves to make more interesting videos with.

I spy a bitchfight.

uh....Too Human?

good thoughts everybody, but i found the spin speed the same(as far as i could tell), and half-cabs were pretty much the same as well.  one thing that was good about that is that the words half-cab actually werte included in the scoring area, which i liked.  the last game just called them 180's, regardless of whether you took off switch or regular.  the animations looked awesome, and the game seemed to move alot quicker than the first one, due of course to the frame rate now being 60fps, twice as much as skate 1.  I am WELL versed in the first game, i dont even think i could tell you how much time i spent with it, it would be in the hundreds of hours.  this game seems to be shaping up as a worthy successor, keeping all the good stuff, while adding some interesting new mechanics.  i definately agree the "off-board" walking was terrible, "tank-like" is a very good way to put it.  it might take a full 2-3 seconds to simply turn around.  over all, i expected more from the demo, but maybe thats just because the skate 1 demo was so good.    ps - i play it still when im too lazy to put the disc in the drive.

I also think my biggest complaint with the game is the off board controls. Does anybody else think it's strange that you can move better when dragging something than when your hands are free?

However the game is much better when you get out of the park with that drag glitch. There's a lot of stuff to skate in the little bit of time you have left.

Nice one, Klorox.