It’s a sad state of affairs for the skating genre when a brand new game like skate 3 is released and the only thought in my mind whilst playing is “This still isn’t better than Tony Hawk 3.” Although the last universally acclaimed skateboarding game was released almost a decade ago; developers today haven’t been able to match the level of quality that Neversoft achieved all those years ago. Today, the fate of the Tony Hawk series has been sealed to irrelevancy, and Electronic Arts has taken a stab at the dynasty left behind with their own series entitled “skate.” Sadly, in the latest installment to the series, skate 3, EA spends more time trying to catch up with its own standards rather than present anything new worth experiencing.

Skate’s central concept was established in the first game and is continued in the 3rd: a focus on realistic skateboarding. This goal is accomplished with a unique control scheme where almost every trick is controlled with the right thumbstick. Flicking the stick in different directions or in combination with one of the trigger buttons allows you to pull off every spiffy stunt that real skaters can handle. This allows the challenges to be set on realistic opportunities and goals. Instead of having to grind an entire level flawlessly, it’s considered a huge feat to make it down a staircase rail without bailing.

The story is also set in a realistic atmosphere. It begins with your skateboarding avatar bailing on a particularly massive stunt.  Afterwards you and your friends decide to start your own skateboarding brand. Along the way you run into multiple advertising companies, sponsorship offers, and famous skateboarders. The success of your skateboard brand is reliant on completing numerous press-related photo shoots and videos in order to increase the sales of your boards. These tasks are where skate 3 differs greatly from its two predecessors.

Fear not, the mega ramp returns

The past skate games have frequently required players to perform very precise and specific stunts in a particular fashion. A combination of human error and inaccuracies of the right control stick caused an abundance of problems in these seemingly simplistic plans and resulted in frequent controller throwing. Skate 3 doesn’t attempt to combat the root of the problem, and instead just makes the overall game easier. For example, video shoots now only require you to perform any number of stunts, however you want, wherever you want and as many times as you want. This means if the goal is “perform six stunts,” you can literally stand in one place and Ollie six times in a row to complete the challenge.

In situations like these it’d be easy to pass the burden onto the player’s dedication to learn new tricks and improve their ability, but skate 3 doesn’t reward experimentation or going above-and-beyond the predetermined goal. There are not any rewarding accolades for performing troublesome Nollie 360 Flips or Super Dude Backflips in place of six consecutive ollies. In addition to this, the game’s career never attempts to teach the player new skills past the basic tutorials. Complex maneuvers such as footplants and transfers are never explained within the career. This lack of explanation leads to puzzling instances when the game requires specific tricks to be performed, despite never mentioning them in prior challenges.
What’s bizarre about these problems being prevalent is that they’re the same problems everyone complained about for the past two years. Instead of fixating on the source and making the overall game easier to pick up for beginners or amateurs,  we’re given a more extensive “Hall of Meat” aside, and Death Races have more relevance—distractions used to bait us away from actually improving our ability.

The game does not feature levitating

To be fair, skate 3 includes a somewhat helpful tutorial graphic named the trick tracker. This tool maps what actions you performed with the right stick, and draws them on a small graphic representation of the said analog stick. This means you can see if you’re rotating too much, or didn’t flick in the correct direction. However, this feature is never prominently mentioned so it’s entirely possible to play the entire game without knowing it existed. Skate’s major detractor is its inability to convey helpful tutorials to fully understand the depth of its complex trick system. Without proper progression of difficulty, the game just hits a brick wall once it starts asking for more elaborate maneuvers.

The environments of skate 3 haven’t improved much either. The Tony Hawk series thrived because each map had a plethora of spots and locales for skateboarding extravaganzas to be had. In skate 3, the world has definitely become more condensed, but there are still long stretches of bland asphalt and uninteresting terrain before arriving at one of the few key hotspots. This issue is somewhat quelled by the ability to teleport to any of these locations via the start menu without having to discover them first. Regardless, it’d be nice to have a small skating-dedicated town or village instead of a full city with extraneous excess.

You get extra points if your entire team wears matching outfits (not you don’t)

On the plus side, skate 3 does present a few important additions to the formula. Traversing off your board is now a viable way to travel thanks to a control overhaul, and the ability to create your own skateparks is an important step for the user-created content hemisphere that the game frequently prides itself on. The soundtrack has also seen improvement with this iteration. The soundtrack features a couple solid tracks and mixes in a blend of genres ranging from Q Lazarus to Ole Dirty Bastard. There’s also a unique music option where based on how well you skate, original tracks from artists like Del The Funky Homosapien are played in the background to signify your skill.

In reality though if you’ve played any other skate game, it is the same exact thing. This may be a good thing if you’re way into skate’s depth and style; for everyone else, whatever problems you had before are still there, and whatever minor additions have been included do not make up for the frustrations and screaming sessions you’ll experience thanks to the inaccuracy of the controls. Without any meaningful additions or changes, the game feels like “skate again” instead of a proper sequel. If Electronic Arts truly wants to outlive Tony Hawk, and perhaps one day become better than the franchise we all grew to love, they’ll have to try a lot harder than this.

The next installment to Electronic Arts’ establish skate series is now out for your buying and playing pleasure. The developer decided to celebrate the event by releasing a launch trailer for the game. If you like skating in real life as well as video games this wonderful trailer should both excite you and hype you up to discover for once you’ll be sitting on your ass… but on a comfortable couch, instead of gravel after wiping out. Here’s the dope trailer:

Skate 3 is coming out next week, and to let everyone know Electronic Arts has released a TV commercial for the game. So starting sometime next week during the launch of the game, you should be seeing this odd video on your television. For some reason I get an odd Braveheart-vibe from the commercial. These guys must really be into skateboarding if they got flags and stuff:

Those of you thinking the skate series are dead wrong. Not only was skate 3 revealed a few weeks ago, but we also have some screenshots to show you guys. Stellar images featuring people on skateboards, people doing tricks on skateboards, and making places where you can see people on skateboards.