I’m a serial PS3 demo-downloader, which often leads me in one of two directions. 1 – Demo convinces me a game sucks and I dodge a bullet, or 2 – Demo convinces me that game is the best thing since the spice rack and I have to have it. Unfortunately, often times the demo is wildly misleading and I end up buying a game that I hate. The jury is still out on Skate 2.
Here’s the thing … I hate, hate, hate video games where in order to progress you are forced to do the same thing over and over and over again. I don’t mind, for example, in GTA IV when I fuck up a mission and I have to do it over again, but then there are games like Stuntman (a horrible driving game) where you have to start a stunt that should take about a minute to complete (if you do it perfectly) but then you crash in the first 10 seconds and you have to start over. And then you crash again and start it over. And then doing that again. And again. And again. Filling a solid half-hour worth of game-play with the same 30 seconds of action over and over. Oh, it drives me mental. It’s about as fun as plucking nose hairs. I was forced to give away my copy of Mirror’s Edge to my daughter for this very reason. She, of course, beat the game in about three hours, the little shit (although, I admit that was a giveaway-crime of passion, and I actually think that game is pretty cool).
Now the Skate 2 demo was excellent. The only bitch of it is that is a timed demo … you only get 5 minutes worth of play, with time added on for completing things. So it is a mere glimpse into the world of the game, but that glimpse convinced me I had to have it, so like a good little commerce-sheep I went right out and snagged a copy.
This is not Tony Hawk. There are no forty foot leaps with 4 grabs and 3 flips per trick. There are no over the top “special moves”. It is very much a simulation … with slightly enhanced physics to make it interesting. The controls are semi-intuitive but there is, I found, a steep learning curve. Essentially, the right stick controls what you do with your board, and the left stick controls what you do with your body. So to pull off a 180 kick-flip, you pull back on the right stick (to load your jump) and then quickly push up and slightlyoff-center (straight up is a simple Ollie), while pushing the left stick to the side. Shoulder buttons are used for grabs and plants. Manuals are tricky as you have to “balance” your analog stick just perfectly to pull them off – but you get used to that. So you can see, right out of the box, it isn’t that easy to do much other than fall down. And you do. At great lengths. In fact, even after you get used to the controls, you still wipe out on the order of every 20 or 30 seconds. The game should actually be re-titled from Skate 2 to Get Up After You Faceplant 2.
So (I was about to say “long story short” but it looks like that ship has sailed) I like this game. But I swear I almost had about 37 strokes in the 48 hour that I’ve owned this game. It can be so effing frustrating that it’ll make you want to swear off video games forever. On the other hand, the online play is topnotch. You can just skate around with friends or random stranger, or do little mini-games / challenges. And the replay video editor is hella-cool (provided you download the enhanced editor thingie for $4.99).
Right now I’d say I’m at about 66.6% love and 33.3% hate (you can keep the extra .1%). My love goes up when I’m online, but it plummets when trying to complete career mode. I swear to Buddha, I spent 2 hours yesterday trying to tweak a hand-plant on a cat-walk … and we all know how painful that can be.
BTW … I’m Jack-Mike in the PS3 world if anybody else has this and wants to look me up and make me look bad.