At 1/17/08 07:34 PM, 36Holla wrote:
Please EXPLAIN to me using various REASONS why I should buy this game over a Tony Hawk game and back up your reasons with EVIDENCE to support those REASONS. And while you're at it, why don't you go into more depth of how the controls are more realistic.
Okay?
Well, to start with, it's a(n almost) completely seamless game world, and I don't mean seamless as in American Wasteland, here's some big corridors seamless, I mean seamless. The only non-seamless bits, that I can think of, are two indoor skate parks. It's also pretty sizeable, although the suburbs section feels a bit dull and empty, the Old Town in particular is a joy to skate around (Suburbs, The Rez, Old Town, and Downtown are four sizeable areas, all unlocked from the start) Its a vibrant, fairly realistic world. You don't find many walls that have a quarter pipe at the bottom in the skate. world of San Vanelona. I'm not going to say there aren't any half pipes outside of the various skate parks around the map, but there certainly aren't TH quantities.
The controls are, while I wouldn't say realistic, you're still using an analog stick for example, ARE innovative, intuitive, and FUN. You pull down the right analog stick, your player crouches. You flick up to the left, it's a kickflip, up to the right, it's a heelflip, depending on whether you're regular or goofy and whether you're in switch or not. Push up and bring back down, it's a nollie. Swing round after crouching and you'll do a shuv it instead of a kickflip. Grabs are certainly not as varied as TH, but they're remarkably simple. L or R for left hand or right hand, and right stick tweaks the direction into various types of grabs. Grinding involves no more than landing on a rail, positioning your board with your right analog stick and your body weight with your left analog stick.
Realism. It's not a realistic game. A realistic skate game would be achingly dull. It is, however, a lot more realistic than Tony Hawks. You can't jump up and down on a rail and grind your way up a hill. If you jump off a big cliff, you WILL bail when you land (and an amusing screen appears describing just how many bones you broke). Games don't consist of wallriding up to the top floor, and then jumping onto a phone line and grinding along it for a half mile.
But perhaps, the best bit of the whole game is the video capturing. Tony Hawks Proving Grounds, to my knowledge, has video capturing, a well designed one where you can cut, splice, and choose camera positions and angles. However, you have to set it up beforehand.
skate., on the other hand, has the last 30 seconds of your skating recording. You can record amusing bails, neat combos, awesome tricks, etc, and then you can upload them to the EA skate website, and unlike Tony Hawks, you don't need to pre-empt them, so you can really create something completely spontaneous. While you can't place your camera and cut/splice footage like THPG, you still have a small variety of camera options, and can change the speed of the footage, and the colouring.
For example, here's a video of when I tried to grind down a staircase (in old town) and ended up doing a cartwheel.
No, the game's not perfect, most noticeably, you can't get off your skateboard and walk, and since Old Town and The Rez are very hilly, with lots of awesome staircases, you'll either be using the warp/public transport feature and watching loading screens, or you'll be doing a lot of pushing, which your character doesn't do automatically, instead you do by pressing one of two of the face buttons (I forget which) to push with either your left or right foot. Also, some of the main 'story' feels a little unbalanced, with some 'video challenges' [where you're given thirty seconds to perform three goals (maybe do a 15ft grind, perform two kickflips, and get 2500 points, for example)] being achingly hard, but the game was never about the story mode. The game was always about just cruising around, finding your own spots and making your own lines, and the only thing the career does is give you some sense of direction, and open up skate parks for you. You don't gain abilities, you don't gain much in the way of unlockable areas, just a few skate parks, which to be honest, except for the last two, are pretty throwaway anyway.
There's a decent soundtrack too, not as good as, say, Tony Hawks 3, but better than Tony Hawks Project 8 or American Wasteland.
Plus, there's an incredible intro. (Also has map and show of the areas, so worth watching anyway)