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Today's Bonus:
I played Skate until smoke came out of my PS3. Skate 2 is a welcome addition. Hours upon hours of entertainment value. Improved video, and even the play control is better (if that is possible). Love the trick setup option. Tony who? This series blows away the competition.
As for the comment about the play control compared to playing with a rock....well, that guy must have a busted controller. I downloaded the demo before I purchased it and there is no "rock" feel to it. Smoother than the first one.
If you are a Skate fan and loved the 1st one, buy this! It's 100% worth it!
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I used to skate some years ago, but I had to quit because of some serious injuries. I still miss a lot skating, so I wanted a skateboarding game. I was really hesitant about which one would be the best option. I played some of the Tony Hawk games and I liked them. Then I started to read some comments about Skate and Skate 2 and almost every one agreed that this series is by far better than Tony Hawk's. So I dowloaded the demos, and both (Skate and Skate 2) seemed pretty good to me. I decided to buy Skate 2 and I don't regret it. It is awesome, obvously is not the same as skating in real life, but I feel that I can fulfill my skating desire. I really love this game, it is one of the best games I have ever played.The things I liked the most (considering that I've been playing only for some hours):
1) The realism, the graphics and the huge variety of tricks.
2) The amazing and enormous city.
3) You can set a mark wherever you want, so you can go back to that mark and retry the session or trick you wanna do.
4) It is kind of weird using the skater off the board, but it is really helpful.
5) There are skating spots everywhere! And you can do some by your own moving objetcs.
6) I like the career mode. There is no time pressing you, you can skate all you want in the city, and whenever you want advance in your career.
7) The clothes and accesories are really cool.
8) There are a lot of spots to discover in the city and more stuff to do in the game.
9) I played the Hall of Meat with a couple of friends and we had a good time. It was hilarious. I don't have to risk my bones and ligaments to do that :)
10) I wish I could skate again in real life... but as I said, I can fulfill a little bit my desire with this awesome game.I'm a big skateboarder and thus loved how realistic the original Skate was. I can understand why people who aren't skaters have trouble with things like terminology, but since I'm an avid skater I know all of the tricks and I was able to see how realistic the controls were. Everything about Skate was fantastic: the graphics, the music, the controls, you name it and it was awesome. However, Skate 2 seems to have taken a few steps backwards in my eyes.
From the very first few seconds of playing I realized that something was graphically different in Skate 2, but not for the better. It is very hard to describe, but things almost seem more "cartoony", or in other words, I am very AWARE that I am playing a video game. Compare the way that the wheels of your board look from Skate and Skate 2, you can easily tell there is a difference in detail. Also, it appears that your facial customization has suffered a hit as well as it feels very limited. One major problem I have found is the lighting issues. In Skate marble surfaces glistened with the sun and you could see light reflecting off of buildings, it was great, but in Skate 2 the light can actually blind you to the point where you can't see 2 pushes in front of your face. Shade is also a major upset; it is difficult trying a challenge where a ledge is either too dark due to shadows or obscured by bushes. Some might consider this simply "realism", but there was no such issue in Skate and there was plenty of sun and shade to go around. The whole feel of the city seems to have changed too. In Skate it seemed like nearly everything in the game could be seen around a town in real life, but Skate 2 puts out some spots and parks that seem like they are out of some weird painting or "create-a-park" gone awry. I miss the realism.
Next comes the challenges, boy do I hope you have a full head of hair so you don't look so bad after pulling a lot of it out. Some of the challenges seem impossible the first time you come across them, and may remain that way a day or two later. Games of S.K.A.T.E. with pros can take well over 10 minutes because the AI will simply not miss a single trick, which can get extremely aggravating to say the least. To be fair not all of the challenges will having you throwing your controller around, but even being good at Skate I've had my fair share of turning the PS3 off and simply walking away.
The new tricks this time around are things like foot plants, no complies, inverts, etc. While none of them are really necessary or add much to the game, they can be a lot of fun to pull off. Unfortunately, transition skating and lip tricks still suffer from control issues. You will frequently find yourself flying out a bowl you were trying to get speed in or going into a grind accidently because you went too high and hit the coping. Probably the biggest addition is the ability to get off your board and walk around, but I have no idea who would have actually approved of such clunky controls. Off your board the character moves slowly, has to turn and face the direction you want them to move in, and has the steering capabilities of a semi truck with blown out tires. Honestly the first Tony Hawk game where you could get off your board had the controls down better, and that was something like 5 years ago.
The filming system has changed around a bit and it took me awhile to get used to it, but overall it is a bit more detailed than in the original Skate. You can now choose what type of camera you want when filming, such as a tripod or having the traditional "following" camera. It takes some getting used to but offers some great results. Also, security has undergone a major change, for the worse. In Skate you had 1, maybe 2 security guards on you some of the time. However, in Skate 2 having 2 or 3 security guards is the norm, with up to 5 or even 6 being possible. It isn't much fun skating a plaza when you get punched off of your board every few seconds. Oh and Big Black is not very reliable when it comes to taking these guys down, just a heads up.
As a whole the game is not anywhere close to as satisfying and exciting as the original Skate and I was expecting it to be at least equal. The controls are the same with the exception of new tricks and getting off the board (which is nothing short of awful) and even moving around objects was less fun than it was made out to be because your rail or ramp can get knocked 10 feet away if you run into it wrong. Something about the graphics still seems off and almost a few years into the past, and the lighting issues can make all of the things you are trying to skate turn pitch black. I'd be lying if I said I loved this game as much as the original, but if you loved Skate you should at least give this one a try.
UPDATE:
After playing Skate 2 exclusively for a few weeks I feel that I have a good experience of the game as a whole and stand by everything I wrote in the review. Also, after playing Skate 2 for so long I popped the original Skate back into my PS3 for 15 minutes and came to the realization that other than the new camera system Skate 2 is INFERIOR to Skate in every single way. I only hope there is a Skate 3 so they can get this back on track.
Read Best Reviews of Skate 2 Here
Skate re-defined a genre of games in dire need of re-definition. While the most popular series out there was busy running out of good ideas, EA put out a game that ramped up the realism, with one of the most genius control schemes I've ever seen in a game, and somehow made skating for its own sake fun in the context of a video game something that no one else has ever really been able to do.Skate 2 is a refinement of the first game. It's laid out better, there are more tricks, more things to do... pretty much everything you'd expect a sequel to that sort of game to be. The few mistakes that were made the first time around have largely been corrected.
So what we have right now in Skate 2 is the best skateboarding game on the market. Possibly ever. It's the little things that make it great. The control scheme and physics in particular are great. It's a game that's easy to pick up and have fun with, but very difficult to master. You don't get a lot of help with the physics. Gravity is your enemy. But the controls are smooth, and with practice, you won't really have much of a problem doing what you want, when you want to do it. It's all completely intuitive, with buttons set up to control every limb of your skater, all of which typically do what you want when you want them to do it, provided your own skill level is up to the tasks. There are a lot of really fun spots to skate. What's really impressive about it is that it's just fun to play, whether you're playing it with any purpose (e.g. career mode challenges) or not. Almost everything is set up to be tricked off of a wise design choice, even if it kind of cuts into the realism a bit although now you go about doing so is not always immediately obvious. The city itself feels huge, especially at first, but you'll get a good feel for where you're going after spending a few hours playing.
It's not perfect, though. Most new players will find a lot of the career mode challenges to be very, very difficult, especially when they get really technical. This will be frustrating to a lot of players who just want to skate around, since a lot of things aren't unlocked in free skate until you complete certain goals in the career mode. Luckily, EA has remedied this situation a bit by providing spots unlocked in career mode as DLC, but that just feels like a sort of cheap way to get it, doesn't it? Also, security guards are not a fun addition to the genre. Really, they're not. I really, really hope Skate 3 cuts that element out.
Multiplayer is also fun. My main gripe is that matchups often end up really uneven, and you'll either end up playing against a bunch of people who are much better than you, or completely destroying everyone else in the match. Also, perhaps the instructions need to be a bit clearer, because when I play Hall of Meat multiplayer, there's always some dork who has no idea what he's doing and goes for scoring. Still, when you end up in a good game, you're going to have a lot of fun, and that's really what matters. It's just a shame it's sometimes so difficult to find a good game. I also feel like the game should give players an extra 10 seconds to respond to opponents' runs. The ability to give props or call their run weak or whatever is a nice touch, but it'd be nice to not have to do it while the run is in progress. It's a good idea that I feel could be implemented a bit better.
But at the end of the day, every time I play this game, I find something new to skate and end up having fun doing that for its own sake, often for a couple hours at a time. And really, I feel like that should be the ultimate goal of this kind of game.I've been waiting for Skate 2 to come out for a while. It seemed like a great game, especially after the original Skate's success. I got the demo as soon as it came out, and I purchased the game as soon as I could. Honestly, though, it's all hype.
Sure, the graphics are great, the tricks are fun, and multiplayer is a blast... but it lacks something. It lacks fun. The city is vast but a few spots are fun. Career will freeze on you very frequently, almost to the point where it is unplayable. The activities are extremely frustrating and will have you throwing your controller across the room. There's been too many times when I've simply turned off my PS3 and walked away.
Coming from Electronic Arts, the poor testing and rushed release were to be expected, but not like this. I really wish I hadn't purchased this game.
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