“Flickit” drives EA’s understated Skate
I’m a sucker for skateboarding games. Perhaps it’s because I can barely even stand on one, or perhaps it’s because it inexplicably looks both relaxing and exhilarating all at the same time.
Anyway, the skateboarding video-game market has been rightly dominated by the generally excellent Tony Hawk series of games, which recently shifted into a higher gear with its last release, Tony Hawk’s Project 8. Using a new dual-analog stick control, the latest Hawk title brought an interesting new way to play to the over-the-top skating genre, something that will continue with the upcoming Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground.
Electronic Arts’ Black Box studio in Vancouver has decided to get into the act this year, competing with the long-running Tony Hawk series in a way, while in another, they’re creating a sub-genre all their own.
Simply titled skate (no capitals necessary), EA’s first effort in the next-gen skateboarding world attempts to portray the sport as realistically as possible, and the result - at least if the game’s demo on Xbox Live is any indication - is anything but dull, despite the lack of huge jumps and grinds that run far less than 30 seconds.
EA, the pioneers of the dual-analog control concept in sports games, brings their experience to bear in the game’s “Flickit” controls, which keep button presses to a minimum while translating the simple-yet-challenging physicality of skateboarding to vivid life. Even though a gamepad is a poor substitute for a real deck, learning to “draw” patterns with your thumb while reaching for the triggers to grab feels remarkably intuitive and rewarding.
As opposed to timing button presses, or any other sort of contrivance to control your skater, the free-flow controls “makes you feel like you’re actually doing it,” said my wife - who ordinarily wouldn’t touch such a game with a ten-foot pole.
In this case, however, the simple control scheme is inviting, and even the novice video-game player can feel right at home with skate after a session or two of play, even if they’re not dazzling with huge combos.
EA seems to have pulled off the impossible; making simply cruising around a skate park - doing the occasional grind and kick-flip - immensely appealing. In April, Mark described the simple elegance of Guitar Hero II thusly: “At it’s simplest, what good gaming can provide is this: ‘I couldn’t do this an hour ago… now I can. Cool.’”
That’s exactly what’s happened with skate. Somehow, the Black Box team managed to capture exactly what’s appealing about skateboarding in the first place: freedom, fun, relaxation and excitement - all in whatever measure you prefer at any particular moment.
All that, with no risk of sprains, torn ligaments or broken bones. Sometimes, it really is better to play inside…
on August 28th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
I can’t get over how much you can do with the controls, either. The fact that they’re so intuitive for somebody who skated for almost 14 years says something else entirely. Knowing “ok, I want to run up on this and pull a 180 hardflip to a nose blunt slide” and just worrying about speed and timing is incredible. In Hawk games you can pretty much fly around at warp speed, and that helps your lines.
In skate, you’re rewarded for going slower sometimes…using the B button to slow your approach down to hit that perfect crooked grind down a hand rail and not fly over the top of it. Timing and approach angles are key in the demo, and I have literally timed out that demo 13 times and counting. I’ve never played a demo that much, but not demo gave me that relaxing and exhilarating feel all at the same time. My wife just put down a preorder today on it, actually.
But session after session, I learn something new. Whether it’s holding the ollie and then the kickflip motion down longer to do a double or quadruple flip (providing you have enough air time), or moving the R stick over prior to grabbing to pull a stalefish grab…the learning never ends.
Exactly like real skateboarding felt.
on August 28th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Really looking forward to this one. The demo is a lot of fun and as mentioned above, seems like you never stop learning something new.
on August 29th, 2007 at 10:13 am
The demo for skate is amazing. Never have I spent an hour kickflipping or doing an ollie. I haven’t played the Tony Hawk series in years, just seemed to get too complex to cater to the rabid Tony Hawk fan. Playing this you get the feeling you can do anything, but you’d have to learn over time. Bioshock’s been taking my gametime, but I’m going to be hopping back into this demo and getting my timing down so I can hit that ollie into a grind.
I thought skateboarding games had passed me by, but this could drag me back in for the first time since Aggressive Inline on the Xbox.
on August 30th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Just finished playing the demo myself and it is impressive to say the least. Reminds me of a throwback to the PS1 ‘thrasher skate and destroy” which was at the time the only alternative for realistic based skateboarding. The clumsy controls killed it for the mainstream buyers but I took my time and got used to it because I really hated the way in which tony hawk was such a divergence from the actual sport. Sure its fun to pull off massive combos but when you want to actually skateboard in the way the sport was meant to be you really cant and skate brings that feeling back to life. The controls were so fluid and it is really refreshing to actually be challenged to learn the fundamentals first. Took me a while to get used to taking things slower and knock some of the tony hawk style of play out of my mind. I completely agree with your wife, it really does feel like you are out there on the board and you feel a great sense of accomplishment when you nail a trick.
on August 31st, 2007 at 7:09 am
Great demo - Is there a way to change the camera angle? The low angle has given me fits.
on October 24th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
[…] In the skateboarding genre, the Tony Hawk series has become synonymous with gaming. EA’s “skate.” is truly brilliant, but it’s realistic take on the sport is very different than that of Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, which lives for over-the-top fun. The two titles provide different experiences, and in many ways, they compliment each other more than they compete. The latest Hawk won’t have any trouble finding an audience. […]