Reviews// skate. Xbox 360

Once you've built your skater, you can start a career. A career is built in the game just like it is in real life. You gotta get the skills; you gotta get noticed; you gotta get sponsored if you want to be taken seriously (or have really rich parents and, even then you have to get sponsored - you just don't need it so bad for things like food, and travel), and you have to enter (and preferably win) competitions.

Clearly, in real life, you're not going to start a skating career by buying a deck and getting straight on the Extreme Sports channel. So, in the game as in real life, you’re better off spending some time free-skating before you test your skills. Free-skating in skate.. Is as pleasurable as it as in real life. The levels are so well designed that you can see areas you should be able to ride and trick, if only you were that bit better. It pushes you to practise and hone your skills to get that bit better - at which point you discover another bit of terrain just out of reach. It's aspirational.

Once you've put in a bit of time free-skating, you can move into Career mode. Here, you skate around a free-roaming environment, choosing challenges that move you forwards in your goal to be the best skater. It’s a loosely defined game mechanic that well reflects the real career of a skater - most of who are motivated by a desire to hang with their pals and skate every day rather than to become rich and famous. Some manage both.

The presentation of skate. is a bit MTV-ey. The graphics are cut and paste, they all vibrate a bit. It's kinda cool, if slightly unoriginal... but it fits its target demographic well, and it's hipper and more attractive than Tony Hawk's. The start of the game has a cool video that is somewhere between the Beasties’ Sabotage and an episode of Scrubs... it almost works, and it introduces us to the skaters who have lent their names (and their bodies – for the mocap) to the game. Early news about skate. had us believe that it was going to be Danny Way's skate. in the way that Pro Skater was Tony Hawk's – but this has not proven to be the case – the cover doesn't bear his name.

SPOnG Score: 93%
Conclusion
After years of domination by the Tony Hawk's series, skateboarding games have got a kick up the pants. skate. brings a loose, free flowing vibe to skating, while making playing the game more similar to real life skating by increasing the realism, and making timing (already a vital part of Tony Hawk's) integral to the gameplay. It's the best skating game I’ve ever played, and is likely to have a very similar effect (bleeding thumbs, sleepless nights) as TH had eight years ago.