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| It's on its way, and so am I |
For a long time it seemed like EA would never acknowledge how much of a cult following Skate 3 had. With community videos showing off some of the awesome things (and more ridiculous glitches) in the game, it carried on and on, way past its expected lifecycle, mostly due to all the improvements and tweaks it had made to the previous games, and the subtle subversive undercurrent that nailed the Skateboarding subculture almost perfectly.
It roped in contemporary stars of the skateboarding scene (notably missing out a certain Mr Hawk for obvious reasons) but you name it, and just about everyone else featured in the awesome intro video that became a staple of the series, and instantly injected each game with a huge dose of humour.
Now it's 2025. Companies like EA aren't interested in nailing skate culture authentically. The first job of any game or potential franchise is to make an absolute shit ton of money to try and recoup the spiralling development costs of modern games (or so we're told).
Ironically it was about a year ago that I signed up for the Skate Early Access for the new 'live service' game. I heard nothing for ages, but then I finally got a download code for the game and excitedly downloaded that sucker - only to find that because the game demands some link between your EA account and your PSN account, my particular instance wouldn't work because my EA account could NOT be synced with my PSN account (the former being registered with an email address that I lost access to).
Long story short, it took a year for EA to figure out that particular wrinkle - so when I got an email telling me there'd been a massive update to the beta, I thought I'd give it one more try...
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| Does my bum look big on this deck? |
Lo and behold it worked, and after frantically creating my skater character, I was into the tutorial section.
I carefully selected the 'classic' control method for Skate 3 as my preferred control method for the new game, and at first it took me a while to figure out why my muscle memory was failing me. The reason was because "Neu-Skate" was a lot smoother, maintained a solid framerate, and more realistically had 'weight' to it, in particular to your character, than Skate 3 ever had. That threw me for a while but I began to compensate for it.
Sadly, we lost Coach Frank between 3 and this game, which is really sad because Jason Lee is a very funny guy, and there was more incentive to play the tutorial in Skate 3 purely because of Coach Frank barking orders at you, urging you to 'get gud' at every step.
Seasoned Skate players will rattle through the tutorial in new Skate very quickly, and then you're thrown into San Vanelona and the game proper. There's an expansive map here, but obviously you don't get it all in one glorious gulp, you'll need to (literally) grind your way to greatness, as is the model for any 'free to play' game that bases its entire monetization around selling you useless shit for your character.
The whole game looks pretty candy-coated, I guess to ensure that it has a wide range of appeal for younger and older players, and plays it safe with a lot of the more 'edgy' stuff that you saw in Skate 3.
But once you start pulling off some tricks, flips and grinds that old addiction begins to kick in, and you're soon drawn into that 'just one more go' thing that Skate 3 had in spades.
Initially, I hated the map, it's more like the original Skate and not nearly as intuitive or easy to use as Skate 3's map but eventually you'll work out that you can just mark something and head towards it - and really that's all a map is required to do. "Skater Eyes" (the AR 'helper' that's supposed to lay down a wispy trail for you to follow to your next objective) is still a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't - but it would be awesome if it worked like it used to in Skate 3 more consistently. The map also has no sense of depth of height, and given that one of the new game mechanics is the ability to hop off your board and climb, Spider-Man-like, up the side of buildings to access hidden skateables, a sense of 3D on the map would've been a lot more help (or just some up / down arrows on objectives as you head towards them a la GTA).
I also hate the presence of the "AI Helper" (kill me now) that completely lacks any character, instantly becoming a real irritation and that carries through for the early characters you'll encounter in the game (Shingo, what the hell happened to you? Why do you now resemble one of the Saja Boys from KPop Demon Hunters...oh).
Where are those real skaters, delivering their challenges in some reefer-addled tone? Instead you've got perky bubblegum characters who you'd cross the street to avoid in real life, and definitely wouldn't want to hang out with on a plank of wood with wheels on the bottom.
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| Dude, that is NOT an MRI machine! |
After a few hours, I began to see the bugs and quirks of the new game. I got locked into one challenge and could not back out via the map or fast travel, so had no option but to close the game and restart. The ragdoll physics when your character hits the kerb and takes a flier, or takes part in some of the weird "Mash yourself up" challenges is truly horrible, and seems to lack the nuances of "Halls of Meat" from previous games. I guess it was probably a bit too much for delicate sensibilities to get an exact breakdown of every bone you just broke, so yeah I get it for a free to play thang.
With all that though, after a second night of play, something began to click and the old addiction began to resurface.
Hell, I began to enjoy finding my feet (or wheels) in the new game, and taking on some of the challenges (ranging from "Oh my god I could do this in my sleep" to "You've got to be kidding me, I'm never gonna fit in there!").
The core thing is that using the 'classic mode' control system, it begins to feel familiar and the way you pull off tricks will wake your Skate 3 muscle memory back up from its slumber, kicking your THPS3+4 muscle memory back out the door (I always preferred Skate 3's game mechanics and trick catalogue, feeling a lot less button-mashy than the TH series as I said before).
For all the things we've lost, we have actually gained a new skateboarding game that feels like it could still do with a little more development time to iron out the creases, but without giving too much away (NDAs and all that - which is why I used a bunch of screenshots that are readily available on the web rather than anything I captured in-game using the rather splendid clips editor) this has potential, but just like those moments where you're trying to perfect the perfect 400 yard grind on a kerb but don't spot the whacking great big cleat that some nonscrot has installed on it, I'm just waiting for EA to mess this all up somehow, and deliver a final product that is just a hollowed out shell for a storefront, which would be a great shame when you consider the absolute smorgasbord you get in TH games right there in the game box without having to spend a metric fucktonne more.
Looking forward to getting back into San Vanelona though, I've still got 3 more districts to properly explore (the map is pretty massive but lots of bits are locked off initially) but sometimes I just love cruising around the extremely skateable landscape just like I did in Skate 3, just as a fantastic way of winding down at the end of the day.
Promising stuff EA. Don't bail or go goofy on me when this finally releases, and please keep the single player career mode in mind. Not everyone wants to watch stupid dudebros knocking each other off their boards.
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