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Alright, boys and girls. Today, I'm reviewing a game that was designed by EA, known to the world as Skate.. Yes, there is two periods. The first one is actually part of the name.


Story
The story of this game begins with you filming, when you have a nice little run in with with the City's bus system. By run-in, I mean you get hit. Hard.
After a ride to the hospital accompanied by a bunch of pro skaters, and some major reconstructive surgery by (surprise!) more pro skaters, you're ready to start your rise to the top.

Basically, the easiest possible story for EA to come up with. Thankfully, the tutorial is skippable, so you don't have to spend any more time listening to the obnoxious voice of your camera-man, who is actually standing behind you at all times... Somehow. No big complaints there, other than he somehow predicts every movement you make... Maybe because he's your TV screen?

As you progress through the game, though, the challenges take a very, very, sudden step up, and became very difficult, as opposed to warming you up to stardom. 7/10

Actually Playing!
If you're buying this game, it probably means you've been playing skating games for a long time, mainly consisting of the dominative Tony Hawk series. Good news- this game is as far from Tony Hawk as possible within the skating genre. Relying on the Flickit control scheme, which uses the right analog stick to control your skater's feet, while your left analog stick controls the skater's body.

These controls are very, very smooth, but there is a definite learning curve as the game strays away from button-tapping, which is a good thing. Taking a more realistic spin on skating games, you won't see a lot of extraordinary stunts, at least not until you become a 'pro' at the game. There are several flaws with these controls, biggest one being that it's very easy to get some tricks messed up, as they often have very subtle differences.

Still, this is a huge step in skating games, and one that EA should be very proud of having made. 9/10.

Online

I'm going to be really honest here... The online has hardly any impressive features.

Lag isn't the biggest problem, as it's barely noticeable, but it is there.
You can only have 4 people in any given game, yet EA expects you to build an online 'crew'?
You cannot edit footage when playing online, which is sad because online is often where you will land your biggest and most awesome stunts.

However, it can be fun when you do Jams, where everyone goes for High Scores in a 'real' skate contest.

Nothing really impressive, as I said earlier, but it's got a lot of potential to be fun.
7/10

Local Multiplayer

No Free Skate. That was enough to ruin it for me.
You get back-and-forth contests, such as SKATE (HORSE), Trick Contests, which is going back and forth between players in small, limited spots, trying to get a high score. *Yawn*.
This part of the game gets a 5/10.

Overall, this game scores (for me) an average of:

7/10

Even with this half-assed score, I'd still reccomend picking up this game, as skating around town in story mode is usually more fun than the actual game, and even then, it's really cool to land kickflips while doing something other than hitting the Square button many, many times.

Alright, that's my take on Skate. I don't know or care if you agree, this is just my honest opinion. <- That's my disclaimer.