Never being able to do more than just stand on a skateboard and ride it downhill, I always felt like my life was missing something. That was until the geniuses that are games developers started making skateboarding games. The Tony Hawk series way back on PS1 allowed me to do what I never would be able to do in real life. I was an avid fan of the series but my appreciation of it ended with Project 8. It was great, but offered nothing new. I had heard about the Skate series of games, but was never able to play one until now.

Skate 3 (that means it’s the third one in the series, just in case you could not tell) is set in a huge open world city called Port Carverton. It features a full roster of professional skaters, all of whom are branded with their real sponsors. The city itself is massive and it will take you weeks to find all the cool skate spots. Just when you think you have found them all you will stumble across an even better one. The town planning department clearly has a skater or two on the team as every part of the city is skater friendly. There are no police who will chase you down for skating on monuments, and the University Security is actually there to make sure you don’t do the same trick twice, as opposed to keeping you off the railings.

Different strokes for different folks

The thing that separates Skate from the rest of the skater games is the emphasis on realism. Not realism in your skaters invincibility, but rather in the way tricks are performed. The controls are the same as in the previous two games, but for the uninitiated, a short explanation. The right stick acts as your balance. Leaning slightly forward and then kicking back will do a nollie (a nose ollie – a jump on a skateboard). Leaning back and then kicking sideways will do a flip. Using the two triggers you can grab your board, and tweak it with the right stick. If things get a bit hard and you can’t reach a certain ledge, then hop off and run around and jump until you can reach it.

Another facet that is quite realistic is the height attained in the game. Unlike other games, you won’t gain such crazy heights off ramps that give you the world of time to perform tricks. If you can slap together more than two tricks off one vertical ramp, you are amazing. What is rather unrealistic (yet insane amounts of fun!) is the height that most ramps are placed at. This ranges from the top of parking arcades to the top of cranes, and top of virtually every tall building in the whole of Port Carverton. Most of these high jumps are part of the Hall of Meat Challenges, where the point is to see how many bones you can break, and how accurately you can bail from your board in midair.

Challenging challenges

Most of the game, in career, quick play and online mode, features challenges. There is no convoluted story in career mode - you simply need to create your own brand of skateboards, put together a team of skaters, and make lots of money! All you need to do is complete challenges that in turn reward you with board sales. These range from 5000 boards to 25 000 boards. Each challenge has two levels of success. Owning a challenge means you met all the criteria and you pass. Killing a challenge means you passed with distinction. More sales means more unlocks. These unlocks can be used to create things. Lots of things! But more on that a little later.

You can skate through town looking for challenges, but you will never find them all. So to make things easier you can use your challenge map to find all uncompleted challenges, or even those that you have done before but want to improve upon. Take these challenges online and complete them with friends and you will get a bonus score which means more sales.

As you skate along and notice an area that is pretty sweet to create a nice sequence of tricks on, you can set a marker at the top of the run. Skate down the section doing the trick you want, but then rather than walk or skate back to the top you can jump back to where you set a marker earlier. Both the challenge map and the marker system help to keep the focus on skating, and not on travelling from point to point.

Besides skating and earning sales, the creation part of the game is very impressive. You start with creating your skater, and you have a wide variety of clothing, gear and accessories to make him (or her) as unique as possible. You can then create your own board to match your style. You unlock more AI team members that you can also customize. Not happy with your team’s logo, then log onto skate.ea.com and create your own new unique one.

Creator of your own world

In the unlikely event that you get bored of skating through town, you can also create your own skate park. The editor is very friendly and you can create anything to your liking, from your basic backyard vert ramp to crazy mixes that will set the skating world on fire. If you think your park can cut it out there in the big bad world, then upload it for others to download and rate. Perform some of those crazy stunts and amazing tricks and you can edit the replay of the trick and upload it as well. Yip, skateboarding is all about messing around with your friends, and you can share your antics and creations with ease.

But, the game is not perfect. It looks pretty good, but since we are so deep into this generation of consoles’ lifespan I expected more from the way the game looks. It seems a little bland, with a lack of creativity. The challenges that come out of these bland areas actually make up for the bland graphics. Yet the game feels a little dated. Comparing Skate 1, 2 and 3 in some online videos it’s clear that you will not purchase the third one for its graphical improvement, they all look virtually identical.

The game also contradicts itself. None of the skaters in the game wear any protective gear. When they fall the skaters do pick up a few bruises and dirt on their clothes. Fall from higher up, and they actually break bones. The game actually encourages skaters to perform death defying leaps and do summersaults while doing that. You can break every bone in your body without any consequences. I admit, it’s devilishly fun to bail your skater from great heights, but a chance to teach a lesson has been missed here.

The Coach Frank way

Skate 3 teaches you other lessons though. Jason Lee aka Earl Hickey aka Coach Frank will show you the ropes in the game. He will show you all the cool tricks, teach you how to tweak them, and then how to really kick butt in all sorts of challenges. He is also guaranteed to make you laugh. Complete his training and he becomes a playable character. And unlike your average game out there, these lessons should be compulsory. I tried to just hop in and play and quickly realized the challenges were all too hard. Going back, completing the training and then trying again did wonders for my ego! No gamer is too hardcore for the training modes!

Skate 3 is a great skating experience. It is easy enough to pick up with a few lessons from Coach Frank, yet hard enough to get great satisfaction from after finally nailing that insanely hard trick. It does not improve a lot on the gameplay mechanics from previous titles, but the vast new city and online play makes this the skating title to own. However, if you have the previous two Skate games you will be hard pressed to warrant this new one.

And remember, skate hard! That’s the Coach Frank way!

The good: Realistic skating controls (or so I am told!); online features; creation utilities; Coach Frank!
The bad: Small upgrades from previous versions; bland in places.
The ugly: Missing the chance to teach lessons about safety.

Purchase: