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'Skate 3' hands-on preview: Darkslides and DIY skate.parks
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'Skate 3' has a posse
We all have Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Assassin's Creed 2 on our minds right now. Meaning it's the perfect time to head outside, catch a breath of fresh air, and maybe, just maybe - Skate.
We did that just last week, heading down to Electronic Arts HQ in Redwood City, CA. for a first look at May 2010 action sports game Skate 3. And it made us want to hit the park.
Fans of the two year-old, millions-served franchise know the game's success comes down to its reverence of skateboarding's technical side. Skate 2, released Janaury 2009, sold over a million units on its own for Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
The game's tight controls, graphics, and deep knowledge of skating made it stand out against its fatuitous rival franchise Tony Hawk. Even more, Skate 2's ability to allow friends to skate together online, "film" tricks, and share them enabled a rabid online fanbase. With a Metascore of 84/100, user complaints were focused on the overall difficulty of the game, and how goofy your dude looked walking around off-board.
Senior programmer Jason DeLong says the off-board animations are cleaned up, and Skate 3 is all about more team play, with tweaks to get beginners off to a fun start. You'll be able to clan up, design your own team logo and battle for world domination online, says DeLong.
We played about an hour of the pre-alpha, team-based matches against Skate 3's programmers from Vancouver-based Black Box, and it was good times. Challenges like 'Own the Spot' featured teams of three competing for 'best trick' on a half-dozen spots in a single locale. Races, group grind contests and a skateboard version of "H.O.R.S.E." followed. (Collision avoidance is turned off for team-play, but we still tried to get out of each other's way and that can feel confusing.) SFCGE won some rounds with the help of new tricks like darkslides [kickflip into a grind holding LB, remember to kick out] and underflips, and we were pretty blown away by the "quarry" section of Skate 3's home city: Port Carverton.
DeLong added that the game is designed to be hard, and - like real skating - reward persistence, agreeing that Skate 2's Girl team challenge was notoriously difficult. To that end, an all new Skate.School will help bring newbies up to speed, while a pro mode makes the game's physics even more unforgiving [read more about that in a later interview on SFCGE].
Rounding out the user-gen bent of Skate 3: the announcement that players will be able to design their own skate parks with the all-new "Skate.Park" editor. We only saw video of the editor prototype but it looked as intuitive as those old Excite Bike level editors, and the idea of trying to out-Danny Way Danny Way's monstrous ramps seems enticing.
Here's a slideshow of first looks from Skate 3. Subscribe to SCFGE for follow-up interviews with Black Box's Jason DeLong and 'Skate 3' pro skater spokesperson Joey Brezinski. And then go skate!
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