In what is fast becoming a bumper year for planks on four wheels, following the triumphant homecoming of the classic Tony Hawk’s games, skate. sees the return of the beloved skateboarding series after a fifteen year long hiatus. Taking to the streets of San Vansterdam, this open-world concrete playground will become your new home from home and, if you’re anything like me, you are going to know every hubba, rail, bank, and quarter-pipe like the back of your own hand.
Whilst the series has certainly taken its time to re-emerge, it’s been time well spent. Sporting a new look that bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain Epic online shooter, skate is bright, bold, and glossy. Sunny San Vansterdam is a city full of possibility, every stair set, open plaza, car park or church (yep, a church now full of ramps; y’know, normal stuff) practically begging you to stay and explore what it has to offer.
The most important thing is how skate feels. As someone that’s played pretty much every skateboarding game ever released, trust me when I say that this feels bloody fantastic. It’s been a tough transition from hours spent playing Session, a more sim-focussed skating game, but after an hour or so, the muscle memory from my days spent with original Skate trilogy kicked right back in. For those unaware, the act of tricking on your board is primarily controlled with the right stick, each flick being an analogy to its real life counterpart trick. Move the stick up-right and you’ll heelflip. Add in a rotation from the bottom-left first and you’ll tre flip instead. It’s intuitive but can be demanding for newcomers. Combining this with grabs on the bumpers and rotations on the left stick, and you can imagine the possibilities for personal expression.
Whilst having set challenges that will task you to complete lines whilst collecting floating bearing icons or trick specific moves over, on, or around an obstacle, or throwing yourself off a ludicrously high building like some sort of immortal meat puppet, these will only be your short term goals. It’s going to be the hours you lose in San Van just messing around that truly excite me. With the possibility to add your own ramps, rails, kickers and more, every spot can become exactly what you want it to be. With new equipment added via in-game loot boxes (purchased via your experience points for completing challenges), there’s always something new to mess around with and come up with new ideas for.
It’s in this freedom where skate truly shines, including a level of verticality hitherto unseen in the series, the addition of parkour. See the coping of a quarterpipe glistening up on a rooftop? Well now you can just clamber up the side of the building and go see what’s been hidden away. Opening up more of the city than ever before, parkour now feels like it’s always been a part of the game, a natural and obvious fit in a genre focussed on freedom of movement.
As you’d probably expect a game embedded in popular culture, there’s an eclectic mix of tunes to suit almost every taste. From mumble rap to house, hardcore punk to 70s funk classics, I’d be genuinely surprised if you weren’t able to put together a custom playlist that you’ll love from the artists on offer. With even more tracks hidden around the city, playing from coffee shop speakers or cars speeding by, you’ll be able to grab even more to choose from in a Shazam style before adding them into the mix.
A free-to-play game with cross-play and cross-progression available, I can already see the countless hours that will be lost across the globe as skaters jump online with friends to challenge one another, build new spots to master, or just simply hang out together. Sitting in a niche somewhere between the two minute score attack of the THPS games and the realism of attempting the same trick until you nail the perfect looking line of Session or Skater XL, skate delivers dopamine by the bucket load. It just feels so damn good cruising around, finding new spots to experiment with, tricking onto pretty much everything and everything in sight, before pushing off again, knowing full well that there’s even more just around the next corner.
Offering nigh-on infinite creative possibilities, with only your own imagination setting the limit, the return of skate just goes to show that it is indeed possible to teach dogs, as well as old school skaters, new tricks.
skate. is coming to PC, PS4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S on September 16th via early access. Preview based on the Steam version.
