Skate 2 Review
What Skate should have been in the first place.
by darkmurder:
©2009 Noel Schnieder:
The original Skate for the Xbox 360 was an extremely innovative skating title that not only challenged Tony Hawk’s franchise, but totally obliterated it for realism and gameplay. Now the second title, Skate 2, has been released by the seemingly doomed EA Black Box studio.
The title sees you mysteriously shipped off to jail and returning five years later to find San Vanelona with a whole new and complete facelift. A company named Mongo Corp. has given the whole town a new architectural design, leaving many skating spots where it is only up to the imagination of the skater to discover whether they are in fact deemed skateable.
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Skate 2 marginally progresses upon the first by supplying small yet vastly needed improvements from the original title. The key improvement to Skate 2 is the ability to move and manipulate objects so that you can set up the perfect “line” by maximising your points by doing several different tricks in a row.
The feature is extremely important for certain challenges, where without hints, you must use your skating brain to try and figure out where to put the ramp, at what angle in an attempt to get up to that dustbin so you can grind it.
Whilst the feature is much needed, it is extremely clunky and quite difficult to operate at first, when moving the object of choice (such as a ramp) you shift it with the left stick, whilst trying to maintain the angle specified with the right stick.
It is a very tedious process that can result in frustration, however it is the only feasible way it could be done. With placed objects, you may also consign them to stay in their specified place every time you restart the challenge (by adding a marker) or you may reset it to where it originally was.
Skate 2 also implements this with the grab feature, which now enables your character to grab not only objects but cars also to gain speed when going downhill (called skitching). These can all be achieved by the last real feature applied where you are now able to get off your board to set up the perfect line that you have just built with the object mover.
Unfortunately, these are Skate 2′s only real major upgrades, with my hopes of being able to perform more tricks seemingly omitted with only a few new editions being added to the game. The game however builds on the other components of the original that were fun but not quite perfect.
A classic example of this was the “Hall of Meat” category which now has distinct challenges which can be seen as mini-achievements. The game is also much more of a challenge now, as explained within the opening video, when Mongo Corp. came in to rebuild the city, they also tightened security.
Luckily for your character several characters return from the original Skate who can provide services for you to get rid of some of the security/problems implemented by Mongo Corp. You have characters such as Big Black who will assist in holding up security personnel and Sammy who will drain your pool (not metaphorically speaking).
Whilst these characters are not all too cheap to hire at first, later on they become very economical as money in Skate 2 is very easy to come across.
Skate 2 doesn’t overly improve upon its predecessors graphics, however it now runs at a very pleasant 60 frames per second (however it does have a few framerate issues at times). Whilst the graphics are not stunningly impressive, they are far from putrid and some areas you find are beautiful sanctuaries where you can marvel at the beauty of the city.
However Skate 2 implements a by and larger clothing wardrobe for you to choose from which feature surprisingly detailed textures (I suppose they’d have to for the brands, no brands equals less money). The character creator is once again quite disappointing, featuring a stock standard face which is seemingly familiar for all and a few mere hair cut choices.
The audio is stellar as usual (what you always expect from EA sports games) and whilst there are still characters who have annoying pre-pubescent voices, the overall sound effects are quite impressive. The soundtrack is once again a seemingly perfect mix of music that suits the games laid back style perfectly.
Another area where Skate 2 has dared to improve upon is with its online component. Games are now a lot easier to find and surprisingly, lag is quite minimal. There are now 6 game modes to choose from, with my personal favourite being the Hall of Meat, where the highest bail score wins.
This is a definite improvement upon the predecessor and when combined with being able to Freeskate with a buddy, it makes for fun times.
On the whole Skate 2 is a very safe game, it doesn’t try to overly exceed the first title with tricks and impressive graphics, however it does what is necessary to make what Skate should have been in the first place. It provides all of the necessary upgrades, while making for a whole new experience due to the new design of the city.
The game’s added implementation of 60 frames per second now means that the game runs buttery smooth and polishes up the presentation of the game. Skate 2 is merely an impressive upgrade of the first game, however because the first game was so revolutionary and still good to date, Skate 2 gets a thumbs up in our books.
“8/10
©2009 Noel Schnieder:
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Filed under: Xbox 360 News
