I’m still playing (and for the most part) enjoying Skate, which I’m playing at a very leisurely pace. While it’s a lot of fun to just cruise around the world and bust tricks, there are some very awkward design choices that can annoy the heck out of you when you play Skate. The inability to walk can be infuriating due to the way the world is designed. Bystanders always seem to get in the way of your objectives, which leaves you skating into them more than you would like. But I wanted to talk about one very specific case of poor game design that drove me nuts.
skate
Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll
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.
Make It A Blockbuster Night
Blockbuster has had it rough over the last few years. With multiple threats coming from piracy, DVD mailing services like Netflix and direct download options from sources such as iTunes, Things have been so bad, that I’ve seen a number of Blockbuster stores go out of business in and around my area.
I’m not one to rent stuff, but I have been raiding as many Blockbuster stores as I can of late, because they’ve been a great place to buy cheap games. A combination of closing sales as well as clearance deals have helped me flesh out my catalogue. I jumped in on most of these sales fairly late, so I wasn’t able to score games like Modern Warfare 1 for $10 (which I heard a bunch of people did get), but I did get some good stuff (and some not-so-great freebies).
Hit the break to find out what I’ve gotten so far.
In Third Person 