Reviews// skate. Xbox 360

The secret to skate.’s success is simple: instead of pushing forward to move (one of the most annoying things about Tony Hawk's was your skater's perpetual desire to move forward, even when you were stuck in a corner), you use the [A] button. Instead of using a button to ollie, you use the right analog-stick. Sounds simple? It IS simple... but all the best ideas are. Except maybe quantum physics... and the television... and the automobile... and the mobile phone... OK, many of the best ideas are simple. And this is one such.

This small change to the control method has moved skating games on from being good skateboarding arcade action games to great skateboarding sims. It's been something that Neversoft has been grasping at with the addition of the ‘Nail The Trick’ mode to recent Tony Hawk’s games. But EA has nailed the control method and introduced the element of timing into the game that makes it eerily like skating in real life.

Thing is, in real life to get onto a platform, you have to be moving towards it, and then you have to time your ollie so that you get the right amount of height at the right time. The right time depends on how fast you are moving. How fast you are moving depends on how hard, and how recently, you pumped. Pumped is not a euphemism for farted: skateboarders do not propel themselves along the flatland by consuming prodigious quantities of baked beans. ‘Pumping’ is skater talk for pushing along using one foot on the ground and one on the board, as if using a handlebar-less scooter.

In real life, to trick an ollie, you have to change the direction in which you move your feet as you de-weight the board. In skate., you do this by flicking, or twisting the stick as you move it from the fully backwards position (ollie) or the fully forward position (nollie).

This is a work of genius. Not enough can be said about how great this control method is, how analogous it is with real skateboarding, and how intuitive it is in practice. And now that I’ve acknowledged that not enough can be said, I'm going to say no more. Play it. Really, if you have ever liked skateboarding or skateboarding games... get this game and play it.

The rest of skate. is pretty much what you'd expect from a skateboarding video game in the early 21st century. It follows the guidelines laid down by Tony Hawk's to the letter. It includes a great skater builder (far better than that in recent TH games), which lets you choose the physical characteristics of your skater, then dress him in the clothes of your choice from a selection of real world manufacturers.

To bitch a second here... I know this is all about corporate sponsorship and who sucked whose dick (financially speaking) and so on, but you cannot wear Vans in this game. Skating without Vans is like breathing without oxygen. It is the first company to wholly embody the skater lifestyle, long before MTV or Activision got involved. Back when skating made you an outsider. Vans represent everything that once was good about this sport, and not having them on the menu due to some stupid licensing issue is just pathetic.