hen Electronic Arts announced that it would be taking on the Tony Hawk franchise, the video-game skater chuckled. Tony Hawk titles have ruled the extreme sports genre for quite a while, and anyone who attempted to challenge it was generally destroyed. With a focus on realism and community, from what we’ve experienced, Electronic Arts may be on to something.
The three major tenets of Skate are skating, creating and sharing. Long, ridiculous lines, grabbing letters, finding secret tapes and diving off rooftops aren’t included. Before you think about getting your hands on a controller with Skate, you’ll have to toss everything you know about previous skateboarding games out the window. Take your past experiences with Tony Hawk and flush them, because those skills won’t help you in the least bit. While the team is centered on making Skate having a realistic feel, the goal is to also make it accessible to the masses. Therein lies the problem–the masses who are going to play this game also played a crapload of Tony Hawk.
Fortunately, gamers will have an extensive training section to learn the new controls. Instead of focusing on remembering button combos, Executive Producer Scott Blackwood explained that they wanted to do something that felt totally different than the Tony Hawk series.
“Inspirations. One of the big ones for me was Street Fighter II. Back in the early ‘90s. [I] played the s--- out of that game for years, and the first time you do an uppercut with Ryu or Ken you kind of roll the controller up. It’s a tougher move but you could figure it out and learn it and get better at it. And then you play some punk kid and with that move combined with something else that guy would kick my ass, which would make me go back and practice more. We wanted something that felt more like that–what ever you do on the stick translates directly to what you’re avatar is doing on the screen.”
The team’s challenge was to make the control gestures feel like an actual trick or movement. The majority of the movements are mapped to the control sticks. The left stick controls the skater, and the right stick controls the board. EA has named analog stick movements the “flick stick” set up. The left trigger is for grabbing with the left hand, and the right hand is the right trigger. Face buttons are rarely used, however A and X are your two feet for pumping to gain some momentum. Everything is fully analog, and by moving an analog stick or trigger slower, the skater will perform a turn, grab or move slower. Gamers will ultimately set up tricks and lines by controlling the skater’s speed, cadence and flow.