Name: skate.
Genre: Skateboarding Simulation
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3 (Reviewed on Xbox 360)

Tony Hawk was, for a long time, the undisputed king of skateboarding games. It enjoyed years of incremental upgrades that would make even a Madden fan laugh at the lack of upgrades and innovations. Things like custom skate parks, free roaming cities, and customizable characters slowly trickled out and became standard by the time this generation came along.

Some tried to take on the behemoth franchise in the years following but none were successful. Tony Hawk’s Project 8 slammed the final nail into the metaphoric coffin with a full upgrade to the series, a novelty it had not enjoyed since its Playstation roots. We can now all mourn the death of a franchise as the release of skate heralds the beginning of a new age of skateboarding.

Someone picking it up and playing it for the first time may be confounded by the controls and gameplay mechanics. This could even be mistaken for something terrible when, on the contrary, it is something magnificent. Your board doesn’t magically glue itself to anything that has an edge for a grind regardless of any outside influences such as speed or set up. If you want to grind on a rail you need to land on it. The set up is everything and while this may take some getting used to it shows a true revolution of a genre.

The reason the word revolution was used as opposed to evolution above is because this game is really not like Tony Hawk in any way. They share the same instrument but play it completely differently. In one you spin on fire hydrants, do back flips over school buses, and get twenty feet of air off of every ramp. This is fun but it is not skateboarding. Anyone to ever step foot on a skateboard or even watch someone do the same knows that the Tony Hawk games just can’t be taken seriously.

They are fun but not at all challenging in the same way the sport is supposed to be. Skate is not at all like that. Introducing “flickit” controls. Using mainly the right analog players control all of the action by flicking the control stick in a direction. The board is more then an extension of the player – glued to their feet spinning uncontrollably with the touch of a button.

The controls are challenging and require practice to truly grasp (unlike some games). When you pull off a good trick you feel damn proud. Sure, it could be done with closed eyes in Tony Hawk, but that isn’t what skating is about. The graphics and sound are fantastic and truly next generation in execution. The level (there is only one) is massive and feels like a true city. The character customization isn’t as robust as it could be and it is hard to truly make a character look unique apart from their clothing. These fall into the background as the wonderful visuals of the levels will surely put this in the back of your mind.

The main complaint with skate deals with one problem that was surprising to say the least: there is no option to walk. The player is forever trapped in a world where his feet cannot walk him up stairs even if it would be extremely useful to do so. Many times I found myself crashing into the bottom of a stairway with a wonderful looking rail on it in a quest to climb them. Alas, this takes the game down a notch and is a saddening problem. The game is fantastic despite one large problem and I would definitely recommend that you…