A much improved, very fun sequel - but not flawless.
Pros
* Visually sound
* The ability to walk takes the tedium out of trying to scale a flight of stairs.
* Hall of Meat activity's make bailing productive and often fun.
Cons
* Few songs in the soundtrack really tickle my fancy.
* Still kind of think theres too much on one stick.
* Some outright dumb choices were made when it came to menus
* Walking while useful, is difficult to control. Feels more like you're in a tank then on feet.
* I personally don't like having a story driven career mode, I don't mind Skateboarding but hearing the majority of the Skaters talk here makes me want to crack my skull open. Yeah, you're all hip and cool with your skater slang. Neat. Shut up.
I haven't a lot to say about Skate 2.
Skateboarding isn't my forte, even in the video game world.
Like the first Skate, Skate 2 offers a different take on skateboarding then is offered by the Tony Hawk games and is actually about skating and not hanging out with Bam Magera and pals, which is nice.
A lot of tricks are tied to the right stick and it makes for a different experience, but sometimes it feels like theres too much on said stick. When the time comes that an event or something in game asks you to do a specific trick, you may find yourself baffled as to what you're doing wrong when it fails you. The differences in the performance of tricks are often too slight, too specific.
I still like the flickit system better then the button mashing of Tony Hawk games, but they have to find a way to take more load off that right stick or at the very least, cut out in game events that ask for specific tricks and stick to events where we pretty much do what we want to win, allowing us to be creative and do what we're good at. More difficult to pull of tricks should be more rewarded of course, but I shouldn't NOT be able to progress because I'm not moving my thumb just right.
Theres some activities in the game wherein the focus is to do as much damage to yourself as possible. Some will ask you to break or bruise certain body parts, others will require you to be going a certain speed and hit certain objects when you bail.
Point is I spend a lot of time bailing in this game so it's good to know it can be productive.
The menus can be stupid.
The most obvious example: Some activities or events, well you'll fail them.
And you'll have to try again. It'll bring up a menu asking you if you want to retry or quit.
When you press retry it again asks you: Do you want to retry or quit?
Pretty redundant right?
It's worse on events where it fails you because you bail, but theres no time limit.
If it were a time limited event or something I could understand outright failing you, but if theres no time limit why not just let the player get back up and try again and bypass the stupid menu altogether?
The game looks just fine. The environment's again stand out.
Some of the most impressive cityscape in a game this side of GTA4's interpretation if Liberty City.
The soundtrack doesn't stand out so much, which is kind of a shame because I liked a lot of the tunes last year and this year I wound up removing all but a couple from the play list.
Just not my thing.
I haven't touched the multiplayer and I'm not likely too cause I plain suck at this game, so I won't say anything on that.
I like that they've kept the Skate.Reel feature that allows you to take recordings of some of your skateboarding exploits and put then up on the web for all to see.
And I've yet to test it out but apparently theres a graphics editor at the Skate website where you can make your own custom shirts and decks. The few I've checked out looked nice, hopefully they'll do so in game also.
I'd also like to add that I realize the score I'm giving likely doesn't add up to most people when the review has come off perhaps a tad more negative then I intended yet it still manages to get four stars.
As I've said elsewhere I rate the games primarily on fun and I've had a bunch of it with Skate 2 regardless of the flaws. So theres that.
What else can I say? It's a solid sequel. If you enjoyed it last year, you'll enjoy it this year.
If you didn't enjoy it last year, you probably won't enjoy it this year.
If you haven't played it yet at all give the demo a whirl and if you enjoy it, buy it. Or rent it. Or dont.
* Visually sound
* The ability to walk takes the tedium out of trying to scale a flight of stairs.
* Hall of Meat activity's make bailing productive and often fun.
Cons
* Few songs in the soundtrack really tickle my fancy.
* Still kind of think theres too much on one stick.
* Some outright dumb choices were made when it came to menus
* Walking while useful, is difficult to control. Feels more like you're in a tank then on feet.
* I personally don't like having a story driven career mode, I don't mind Skateboarding but hearing the majority of the Skaters talk here makes me want to crack my skull open. Yeah, you're all hip and cool with your skater slang. Neat. Shut up.
I haven't a lot to say about Skate 2.
Skateboarding isn't my forte, even in the video game world.
Like the first Skate, Skate 2 offers a different take on skateboarding then is offered by the Tony Hawk games and is actually about skating and not hanging out with Bam Magera and pals, which is nice.
A lot of tricks are tied to the right stick and it makes for a different experience, but sometimes it feels like theres too much on said stick. When the time comes that an event or something in game asks you to do a specific trick, you may find yourself baffled as to what you're doing wrong when it fails you. The differences in the performance of tricks are often too slight, too specific.
I still like the flickit system better then the button mashing of Tony Hawk games, but they have to find a way to take more load off that right stick or at the very least, cut out in game events that ask for specific tricks and stick to events where we pretty much do what we want to win, allowing us to be creative and do what we're good at. More difficult to pull of tricks should be more rewarded of course, but I shouldn't NOT be able to progress because I'm not moving my thumb just right.
Theres some activities in the game wherein the focus is to do as much damage to yourself as possible. Some will ask you to break or bruise certain body parts, others will require you to be going a certain speed and hit certain objects when you bail.
Point is I spend a lot of time bailing in this game so it's good to know it can be productive.
The menus can be stupid.
The most obvious example: Some activities or events, well you'll fail them.
And you'll have to try again. It'll bring up a menu asking you if you want to retry or quit.
When you press retry it again asks you: Do you want to retry or quit?
Pretty redundant right?
It's worse on events where it fails you because you bail, but theres no time limit.
If it were a time limited event or something I could understand outright failing you, but if theres no time limit why not just let the player get back up and try again and bypass the stupid menu altogether?
The game looks just fine. The environment's again stand out.
Some of the most impressive cityscape in a game this side of GTA4's interpretation if Liberty City.
The soundtrack doesn't stand out so much, which is kind of a shame because I liked a lot of the tunes last year and this year I wound up removing all but a couple from the play list.
Just not my thing.
I haven't touched the multiplayer and I'm not likely too cause I plain suck at this game, so I won't say anything on that.
I like that they've kept the Skate.Reel feature that allows you to take recordings of some of your skateboarding exploits and put then up on the web for all to see.
And I've yet to test it out but apparently theres a graphics editor at the Skate website where you can make your own custom shirts and decks. The few I've checked out looked nice, hopefully they'll do so in game also.
I'd also like to add that I realize the score I'm giving likely doesn't add up to most people when the review has come off perhaps a tad more negative then I intended yet it still manages to get four stars.
As I've said elsewhere I rate the games primarily on fun and I've had a bunch of it with Skate 2 regardless of the flaws. So theres that.
What else can I say? It's a solid sequel. If you enjoyed it last year, you'll enjoy it this year.
If you didn't enjoy it last year, you probably won't enjoy it this year.
If you haven't played it yet at all give the demo a whirl and if you enjoy it, buy it. Or rent it. Or dont.
