Demos are something the Skate franchise has done extremely well. The first game let you explore the Community Centre, a place so popular that they released it as DLC for Skate 2. While Skate 2 did not have the Community Centre, it had Slappys, a wonderfully well rounded park that had just about everything you could wish to skate.
Skate 3, however, has broke this tradition by giving you two connected open areas from the University district. The areas are good, featuring some interesting rails and one or two nice banks, but they are not as complete as the previous demo levels, and the screen fuzz and little warning that appears when you take the wrong turn only goes to make the demo feel small and constrained.
There is the option of skating Coach Frank’s – the character voiced by Jason Lee, he will teach you all the basics of the game, Coach Frank style – training area, either through the tutorials or just free-skating. This area is home to something the University district lacks: banks and pipes. As fun as grinding rails and jumping down steps is, some people like to get air; it’s more rewarding for amateur players, seeing their skater go ten feet in the air, grabbing the board in one hand and spinning round to hopefully not land with a face-plant. I just feel that EA have jumped the shark with this demo – quite literally if you have managed to glitch out the demo area, wink-wink – by not giving enough options for the player.
Demo area aside, how is the skating? Well that depends on what difficulty mode you select, as Skate 3 now boasts three different choices; easy, I have watched my girlfriend play and she likes it; medium feels much the same as the previous instalments, although there are some people saying that it’s easier than the previous game; hardcore has split the community, with its increased gravity, slower speeds and more difficult grinds, it offers something completely new to the Skate veteran.
I like it. Although I can understand why many don’t, as with a lot of perseverance and practice you could skate like this on normal mode. I couldn’t, hence why I like this mode. What I like about it is the decreased speed and heavier physics; where on normal mode you would fly down a small rail with speed, often accidently jumping straight over the thing, on Hardcore you can slowly skate up and land more technical tricks on the rail. It does not really offer more realistic skating as that already existed on Skate 2 if you knew how, what it does offer though, is a more simple avenue to this technical skating; which gives the Skate franchise a huge breath of fresh air, especially for players like myself.
There are a few other new and exciting things featured in the demo, including a few new tricks; darkslides are a refreshing challenge to land, spinning the board upside down before grinding a rail, then flipping back out to land on your wheels; underflips are the other new tricks, requiring you to flick the kickflip then quickly flick the stick back down to revert the board backwards, or something as technical sounding as that.
If technical trick are not your fancy then have fun with new bail mechanics. Although there are a few realistic bails, when you mess-up a fliptrick your character will stagger before regaining your feet and skating on, there are also ridiculously stupid – yet fun – bails. Now when you jump off a building, clock-tower etc. and hit the auto-bail buttons, you can slow down time and even have an aiming target showing where you’re going to land; creating some funny pedestrian take-downs. If you wiggle the sticks upon landing your skater will contort and flip around getting you more points and broken bones – it does look stupid at first, but when you actually do it yourself it’s great fun. But the best new addition to the bails is the broken bones animation, as now when you crash onto the concrete, car, bin, pedestrian, the bones you break will appear on your skate in x-ray form, creating a thoroughly satisfying, giggle-inducing mini-game.
The online is not really playable on the demo, for me anyway, as I kept getting booted out of games. I got in one lobby for a while and that was working well, only for the demo to time out at twenty minutes – why have a demo timer? I do like the team based element though, it seems they have taken the freeskate challenges and crafted them into a competitive multiplayer. Sadly we will have to wait until the games release to see how well this will work.
Skate 3 does look promising, with lots of new additions and further options laid upon the original foundations. I just hope people can see past what is ultimately a disappointing demo and join me in the hype machine for it’s May release. Team Up, Throw Down!
