In Third Person

Although I haven’t stepped on an actual skateboard since I was 10 years old, I’ve had some good times with skateboarding video games. I started with the genre oddly enough on Tony Hawk 2 on the Gameboy Advance, which I thought was great. I then bought Tony Hawk 3 on the Gamecube and it was the pinnacle of video game skateboarding fun for me at the time. The last serious foray into skateboarding games for me was Tony Hawk: American Wasteland on the DS, which was alright, but I never played it for more than 30 minutes.

I’ve watched a number of Tony Hawk games pass me by with no interest in checking them out, but the Skate demo really caught me off guard when it first came out. It came into a scene completely dominated by Tony Hawk’s arcade-y style of skateboarding and ultimately, broke Tony Hawk. Skate didn’t try and beat it with unrealistic shenanigans, it aimed to be the most realistic depiction of skateboarding ever conceived in a video game. It went over so well, that it completely trounced Tony Hawk that year in sales and forced the series to go on hiatus until the relatively recent release of Tony Hawk: Ride.

Skate had one of the best demos on XBOX Live at the time. After doing all the tutorial stuff, you got like 30 minutes to just skate around the park at your leisure. I must have put in roughly five hours just playing that demo over and over, pulling off more realistic lines that felt more satisfying to pull off than any crazy stunts I ever did in a Tony Hawk game. However, it didn’t sell me on it enough for me to pick it up right away. For the last few years, I eye that Skate and Skate 2 box every time I go into a video game store and wonder when I’ll finally cave and buy them.

Well, I finally caved for the original Skate. I was able to get it brand new at a Blockbuster closing down sale for $15.

Considering the fact that this game sold millions and it’s a few years old, I don’t really need to go deep into impressions. I will say that for the most part, it’s a great skateboarding game. It’s structured pretty well and it’s fun to play. However, it’s also made me realize that I don’t really want this as a full experience. I just like to skate around the city and do tricks. Thankfully, there is a free skate mode for that.