Skate 2 reminds me a lot of Grand Theft Auto 4. Yes, I know that sounds a bit absurd, but hear me out. In both games, you have missions or activities that you can do to progress through the game. In both games, you can quickly move around the world, skipping the normal travel time (in GTA you could take a Taxi, in Skate 2 you can simply teleport around the world). However, just like in GTA, some of the most fun you’ll have in Skate 2 is from simply skating around the map looking for challenges or activities. Just like in GTA when you may see a sports car and think to yourself “I quite fancy shooting the owner in the face and going on a rampage in his car”, you may find yourself skating around the world and then think “that looks like an awesome set of stairs, I wonder if I can gap the lot of them?” or “that picnic table is perfectly placed, I wonder if I can hippy jump over it and then hand-plant on the ramp after it?”. While there are so many varied challenges and competitions in Skate 2, ranging from simple to tear-your-hair-out-challenging, it’s the ones that you set yourself as you make your way through New San Vanelona that can give you the most fun as you pull off some epic tricks.

Skate 2 starts 5 years after the original game, with your player character getting out of prison. The intro movie is actually good fun and I recommend watching it, as all the characters in the movie are played by the various pro skateboarders who are in the game. After the movie is finished, you get to create your skater and set his look, clothes and board, something you can do at any time simply by going into the pause menu, as there are no shops in the game this time. From there a brief tutorial starts, leading you to Slappy’s Skatepark while teaching you some of the basics along the way, and continuing to do so while you’re there. It’s a nice easy way to lead people into the game without overloading them with too much information, but as this section can’t be skipped, anyone who has played the first game a lot will find it slightly unnecessary. Still, it doesn’t last too long so the experienced skaters will be through it in no time.

One thing that’s fairly unusual for a sports game is that in Skate 2, your created skater has no stats or abilities to level up at all. In most sports games your created character will get better over time as you increase your abilities or stats by completing various tasks and assigning skill points to various traits. In Skate, there is nothing like that. Your skaters’ ability is as good as it can get from the start of the game, and alongside that, no tricks are locked from you. Everything is available to you from the start, from kickflips to hippy jumps, hand-plants to grinds, it’s all there. The only restriction to each of the tricks is your own ability to do them, which is something that will increase the more you play the game and the more you experiment.

When you’re done at Slappy’s, the world opens up for you and while you’re always given challenges to do, you’re never directed to them. As mentioned in my opening paragraph, you can choose to teleport to a challenge, to skate towards it in a more conventional manner, or simply skate around the city looking for things to do on your own. Doing so is actually the only way to unlock some of the challenges, as the Own The Spot challenges need to be found in the city through exploration and aren’t unlocked in any other way. As you progress through the story, more and more challenges become available to you in many different categories. There are career challenges where you try to gain sponsors and get on the cover of magazines. There are Pro challenges where each of the Pro Skaters has a challenge for you to try and beat. You have Deathraces which are downhill races through traffic, so expect to leave a few teeth embedded in a car or two. You have the previously mentioned Own The Spot challenges, where you have to beat a certain score in any given spot to “own” it. These challenges are all varied and some of them will really test your skills in the game, but you never feel that any of them are out of your reach, they may just require more practise or a bit of ingenuity in setting your trick up.

Then there are my favourite challenges – the Hall of Meat challenges. Instead of beating a score on an object, or completing a certain trick, the Hall of Meat challenges are based around causing yourself as much damage as possible by bailing off your board in the most painful way you can. Most of the challenges aren’t location specific and can be done anywhere, and you may find yourself doing some of them by accident, but with some of the challenges you’ll have to go out of you way to find the perfect spot to crash into. The challenges are varied and may be along the lines of causing yourself as much body damage as possible, crashing at a certain speed and into a set amount of objects, flipping a few gestures while spinning through the air, and more. Some of the challenges are pretty hard and you’ll really have to explore the map fully to find the perfect spot for some of the more difficult ones. They really are great fun though and on more than one occasion while skating around I’d find a few great spots for bailing, and spend the next 20 minutes throwing my guy off his board to try and pass some of the challenges.

To help you in your quest to beat all the challenges, Skate 2 adds a few new additions to the game. You now have the ability to get off your board and walk around. It’s something that you’ll find yourself doing on a semi-regular basis as it can often be the quickest way to get up certain objects, such as stairs, and you’ll be glad that the ability is now there. You also now have the ability to move certain objects in the world. You can’t move everything, so you can’t move a few cars and place them next to a ramp, but you can move the ramp into the road and try to get over the cars there. It’s generally the smaller objects you can move, such as mini ramps, rails and picnic tables, and you’ll need to do this to pass several of the challenges, and you’ll be given hints that you need to move something if the challenge actually requires it. This is another welcome addition to the game as it can let the more imaginative among you go wild, setting up ramps and rails to create some really exceptional tricks.

Also new is the amount of tricks in the game, roughly double what was available in the first game. Now you have extra tricks such as hand-plants, foot plants, finger flips, hippy jumps, lip tricks, and the ability to skitch. For anyone who doesn’t know what skitching is, just think Marty McFly in Back To The Future, holding on to the back of a car being pulled along while still on your board. It’s a handy option when you’re trying to skate uphill as the cars will obviously be going much quicker than you can.

So, you have tons of challenges to do. You can spend hours trying to break as many bones as possible. You have lots of new tricks to try and master, and you can put Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love” on and pretend you’re Marty McFly. All of that means nothing if the control scheme lets the game down, and thankfully, the controls are exceptionally tight. Unlike other skateboard games that rely on the face buttons to do various tricks, in Skate 2 you use the right thumbstick to do the various tricks you have available. Pull it backwards and you’ll crouch on the board ready for an ollie or kickflip. Push it forwards and you’ll crouch near the nose of the board, ready for a nollie or nollie kickflip. By pulling the stick backwards and flicking it in various directions you can pull off all kinds of tricks such as varial kickflips and laser flips, all of which are handily explained in the trick book which can be found in the pause menu. Grinds are pulled off simply by landing on a rail or edge of a table etc at the right angle. You don’t need to press a button to activate a game like in the Tony Hawk games; you simply need to land right. It does mean you may land an unnecessary grind now and then, but generally you’ll find yourself aiming for them whenever you see a surface that looks grindable.

From a technical standpoint, Skate 2 handles itself very well. The skaters are all well modelled and animated, all the tricks look authentic, and the bails look exceptionally painful. Fall enough and you’ll notice your clothes getting dirty, and wear a short sleeved shirt and you’ll notice scrapes and bruises appear on your arms as you break yourself repeatedly. New San Vanelona is a beautifully modelled city with lots of alleyways, stairs, pools, roads, skate parks, monuments and more, all of which are waiting for you to find and trick off from. Sometimes it feels a little empty as there are often roads that feel like they should be busy, yet there’s not have a car in sight, but generally you get the feel you’re in a living city with pedestrians going about their business, and generally getting in your way. The music is also excellent, with a huge amount of artists that cross many genres, from metal to rock and hip-hop, so you’re bound to hear some stuff that you’ll love. The vocal work is also good, though you’ll start to hear the same lines over again as you fall off your board or pass challenges, but generally it’s done well enough that you don’t question it or wonder why they bothered.

You’ll notice that I’ve only looked at the positives of the game so far, and that’s because there are so few really bad points, it made sense to put them all together. Firstly, though it’s a great addition to be able to get off your board, it’s been implemented so badly it feels like an afterthought added at the last minute. Your skater is jerky when he’s on his feet, and you constantly have to battle with him to get him where you want to go. If you’re just running up stairs it’s not really an issue, but when you’re trying to manoeuvre objects it can get very frustrating. Hopefully if they do a Skate 3, the on-foot controls will be much tighter by then. Another potential problem is that the game could possibly be a little hard for casual gamers. If you’re willing to put the time in then you’ll get to grips with it, but if you’ve got friends coming around who have never played the game before, the controls can certainly be confusing and take a little getting used to. One final issue, if you feel that way inclined, is that Skate 2 can be seen as a mere evolution of the original, rather than the revolution of the genre the first game was. The adage of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” was certainly used here, and while it’s not particularly an issue for many people, if you were looking for the game to redefine the genre once more, you may be disappointed.

That being said, Skate 2 is still comfortably the best skateboarding game on the market today, and one of the best sports games around as well. If you’re looking for a game with tons of depth, lots of tricks to master, and are prepared to put the time in to beat some of the more difficult challenges, then Skate 2 will keep you entertained for hours on end. It’s highly recommended.

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