I’ll tell you now that I’ve never really liked the Skate series of games because I prefer the simple button press controls of Tony Hawk to the ‘flick it’ controls of Skate. Yes the gesture is more like doing a real kick-flip, Ollie or nollie but sometimes you have to be deadly accurate with your thumb movements if you want to pull off exactly what’s asked of you.
Still, I approached Skate 3 putting my preferences aside and found that it’s a comprehensive skating game with a couple of new additions that make it the perfect game for people who are into what I think is a very dangerous activity.
The game begins with a small movie featuring who I assume are all skaters chopping trees down and making skateboards at a sawmill. The game then starts proper as the ‘Hall of Meat’ feature is introduced as a news clip shows you bailing from a rooftop and smashing your face. Cue the ‘make your skater’ feature as you choose a name and team name as you start your own skateboard company and recruit AI team-mates to help you out. New ones are unlocked as you do tricks and complete challenges around the various areas.
Not much has changed in the game if you’ve played Skate 2. The main difference is the team-based challenges and the fact you can jump into online games and the points you earn all count towards your single player score which really does encourage getting online with your mates.
There’s also an easy mode if you find being super-accurate with the right stick a bit of a problem and you can set up your own camera to record your tricks and stunts and post them online for other Skate 3 players to see.
Setting markers is also very useful so at the touch of a button you can jump back to where you were before a tricky jump and not have to get off your board and walk back to the start. Unfortunately, when you walk you do look really weird. Must be all those broken bones after playing Hall of Meat where you can now move your skater about to bounce off objects and set up a bigger score combo.
Skate 3 isn’t a massive leap forward in the series so I recommend it if you’re hankering after a skating game and haven’t played Skate 2. If you have the previous game, maybe wait for Skate 4 to rear its head next year. Skate 3 gets a very good 7 out of 10.
Related: Skate 2 review, Skate It review, Skate 3 review on Youtube
