Game Review: Skate 2

Good:
-They have basically perfected the innovative controls from the first game. Now, each face button corresponds to a limb, so there are all kinds of crazy new tricks and combos that are possible.

-There are more varied environments than the first game. Considering that you can spend hours coming up with cool stuff at one spot alone, there is almost too much to do. In particular, the stuff in the rural hills is a nice change of pace from the skate parks and city stuff.

-There are a ton of fun challenges. Danny Way's challenges in particular were awesome. He's a guy know for building crazy ramps and getting big air, and his challenges reflected that. Unlike Rob Dyrdek's lame-ass "grind these 15 rails in one minute" stuff, Way's kept it simple and fun. For example, one had you jumping off the top of a building into a pool below, and then airing out the other side and landing on the second floor walkway of the neighboring building. It's fairly basic in concept, but it still required that you experiment to find just the right angle and technique to nail it. No time limits, point totals, or gimmicky shit. Just fun. It's really too bad there are only about 10 of these. I wish the whole game was like this.

-The soundtrack actually isn't too bad. It's usually pretty hit or miss in games like these, but there are only a couple songs (that I've heard so far) that I bother to skip.


Bad:
-This is by far the most frustrating game I have ever played. There is a very high learning curve. In the first game, there were a few challenges that took me 50-100 tries to finally nail. In this game it seems like every other challenge is like that. I've almost broken my controller a few times out of pure rage. I've even fantasized about flying to wherever Black Box studios is, finding the project leader and punching him in the fucking head.

-The off-board controls are downright terrible. It's nice that you don't have to worry about curbs and stairs getting in the way now, but it's clunky and completely unintuitive. How anything this bad could make it into the final version of a fairly high profile game absolutely boggles my mind. I hope whoever was in charge of this fell victim to the job cuts that just hit their studio (yeah I'm an asshole). Seriously though, this is the kind of shit you would get when game developers were still learning how to deal with 3D movement, which was what...10 years ago?

-Some of the additions were a step in the completely wrong direction. I have no problem with having to call someone up to drain pools that you find or "uncap" (remove anti-skating measures on) rails you find, but having to call Big Black to keep security guards out of your hair is fucking stupid. It's not even that bad in theory, but the fact after I call him, he basically just runs into me and knocks over ramps and rails (thanks new physics system!) that I've set up for a time-based challenge, while mobs of security guards stand there (not attacking me, but still in my fucking way), well...that pretty much defeats the whole purpose. Seriously, there are ways to add more challenge other than adding this bush league bullshit. Learn better game design.

-This is some of the most obnoxious dialogue I have ever heard. Thank god there is a mute/subtitle option. I never knew that 'gnar' could be used as both a prefix and a suffix, let alone that it was even a fucking word to begin with. I realize that high schools kids are probably the target audience, and while I'm not brimming with hope for the next generation, they couldn't really be this dumb, right??


Overall: I don't think I've ever had a love/hate relationship with a game like I am having with Skate 2. I thought the first game was great, and this one builds on it in a lot of solid ways. The Danny Way and photo challenges are fun as hell and the Hall of Meat crashing stuff has been fleshed out into it's own mini game that's a good time-waster. And the skate controls and physics are great to boot. Unfortunately, some of the challenges are just downright ridiculous. If a game has me on the verge of chucking my controller into my TV, then something is just not right. Also, I really feel that they are veering down the wrong path with their additions. They basically knocked the Tony Hawk franchise out with one game by focusing on realism and ignoring all the gimmicky MTV bullshit. Unfortunately that seems exactly where this game is heading (just replace Bam Margera with Rob Dyrdek), which is a damn shame. There may not even be a third game due to all the cuts their studio has just fallen victim to, and honestly I don't know if that's a bad thing. They should quit while they are sort of ahead.