i used to write video game reviews for my former empliyer’s website. It was an unpaid thing. i was paid in games and cookies. It’s like being a stand-up comedian and being paid in beer.

i hope that by now, i’ve published enough stuff to be considered a viable freelance reviewer.

One of the latest review copies to cross my desk was EA skate. The game is huge, and i haven’t given it enough time to review it, but here are my initial thoughts:

“Hooray.”

Any mention of skate. is going to include something about the (formerly) only game in town, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. That series caused gamer burnout a while ago by putting out 1 new game a year on every platform including the Atari Lynx or whatever. While i like the idea of the Pro Skater games, there was a lot that bugged me about the series.

Realism

Very few of the tricks you can pull off in the Pro Skater series are actually manageable in real life. The Pro Skater series is very fantasy-based, in that you can grind up a telephone wire onto the Eiffel tower and do a 900 degree spin on the way down dropping several stories to the ground, and not die if you hit the Y button to grind a park bench. Cool, but what? If you tried to pull that nonsense with, say, football, people would flip. Imagine a football game where you could throw the ball and hit a TURBO button to accelerate down the field and catch your own pass. Dat’s crazy talk.

skate., in contrast, presents a suite of tricks which, while boring, are actually possible. That’s much more compelling than Pro Skater. In Pro Skater, you can ride a foot away from a wall, and if you hit the Y button, your skater will snap to the edge like a magnet and start grinding. In skate., you approach an edge and ollie up to it, making sure your wheels and knees are out of the way, and if you played all your physics cards right, you might just be able to grind the edge. More often than not, you’ll bend in half backwards and swallow a few teeth. The game then gives you a helpful chart chronicling your injuries, and you try again.

It’s not as sexy as Pro Skater, but it helps a player like me by putting me in the moment. i start to think i’m learning to do these tricks, like i’m actually getting better at “real” skateboarding. And when reality comes crashing down and i remember it’s all just a game, i think “heck … with enough practice and guts, i could pull off a few of those tricks in real life.” You can’t say the same thing for Pro Skater’s belly-on-the-board Superman grind. Gee whiz.

Morality

Pro Skater started to get my goat more and more as it goaded me to do increasingly illegal things. The third or fourth game had me riding around Alcatraz when i wasn’t supposed to. Fine. But American Wasteland required me to willfully destroy property, vandalize stuff and run away from the cops. In skate., there’s a little bit of stuff that goes on in off-limits areas. Sure - i undersand that. But Tony Hawk’s missions are like “Ollie this old lady in the face” or “Do a flip trick over this guy you just killed.” It started to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

skate.’s missions are less sensational, but again, more realistic. You’re trying to become famous by landing on magazine covers and publishing videos of your tricks. Sure, the “get sponsored by Adidas” career mode seems played, but that’s what you’d actually want to do as a skater. Tony Hawk has you grinding airplane hangers to expose the government’s Area 51 conspiracy. Relax, Hawk. You’ve got your money. Why don’t you just go on a canoe trip or something?

Community

Great pains have been taken by EA to get people playing with each other over their proprietary service. i would have preferred it all to happen over Microsoft’s tried and trusted LIVE service, but they’ve gotta be all awesome. i don’t know how comfy i’d feel breaking my spine on a picnic table in front of five strangers, but if a few of my friends get the game, i’m sure it will be a good time. The photo upload feature is a bit of a wank … i’m not very interested in browsing through scores of people’s photos of the tricks they can pull off in a video game, unless gamers start posting funny stuff where they’ve found bugs or exploits, or peurile tricks where they get the perfect angle and backdrop so it looks like the skater has no pants. Junk like that is alright.

Freshness

i don’t know if i’m alone here, but if i never play another video game starring Bam Margera it’ll be too soon. Pro Skater trolls out the same old guys game after game to wearily issue missions in their mostly monotone voiceover bits. skate. gives me a slate of equally bad actors, but the names are all fresh and i’ve never heard of any of them. i had never heard of the other guys before Tony Hawk’s game either, but it’s heartwarming to see other skaters get some love.

Just like in real skateboarding, you’re gonna fall down a lot when you play skate. But unlike real skateboarding, you’re not gonna die. i’m really enjoying the game so far, and i recommend a rental to see if you can put aside your Pro Skater biases and give it a try.