As a lover of the skateboarding genre of video games, I can easily say that have been spoiled over the last few years with the arrival of EA’s outstanding Skate series. The genre needed new life and Black Box has done so with finesse with Skate and Skate 2. EA is back at it again with the release of Skate 3, a fine tuning of the series as opposed to a radical change from the previous. Skate 3 follows you as you become a mogul in the business of selling skate decks. You’ll have to grind, grab and ollie through various challenges to increase the sales of your decks. You are the star of Skate 3 and you can choose how you will play the game, and how you want to grow your newfound business. As you begin to amass sales, you’ll have to grow a team of skaters to help propel the business to new heights. As sales grow, you’ll have the opportunity to add a new person to your team. You can customize this character to your liking, or if you take advantage of all the online capabilities of Skate 3 you can take your friends character as a team member. The world is yours for the taking and you can tackle the game however you see fit.
Skate 3 doesn’t take any risks and sticks to the previous successes of the series. You’ll still be utilizing the well implemented flickit controls that have given the series a fluid control scheme. If you’re not familiar with the series, you’ll perform most of your robust set of tricks with the right analog stick. It’s probably my favorite staple of the series, as it works almost perfectly. What has been changed the manner in which you can progress through the robust campaign. You can tackle the hundreds of challenges alone, or you can hop online and skate with 2 other players. The challenges include various feats such as attempting to nail specific tricks on items in the world, or trying to break as many bones as possible. Navigating and beginning new challenges is done with ease as you can teleport to any challenge that is available from the pause menu. So you have the option to explore the world and take challenges as you go, or for those looking to breeze through the game, you can just go from challenge to challenge. Like the previous, you can play Skate how you see fit and you can even complete the game without completing every challenge.
This allows for players to play the events that they want to play, without being forced to play the ones they don’t. You’ll receive a certain number of deck sales with each completed challenge with a bonus number of decks if you complete the challenge online with friends. With a goal of 1 million decks sold, every little bit helps to make it to the goal and the bonus decks encourage being a social butterfly. The co-op is a cool addition to the series, but it doesn’t feel quite like a finished product. I often preferred just skating around on my own, and doing some co-op challenges from time to time. Along with the new co-op focus comes an online social network of sorts called the “skate.feed.” This network is Facebook-esque feature that allows you to communicate with friends, check out scores, and share content such as pictures and various other features. It’s a really cool addition that might be a success in future entries in the series, but it could have benefitted from integration with other social networks. When you’re not trying to build your empire, you can take the time to build a skate park with the easy to use park creator, which as with the other features, hasn’t been radically changed but certainly improved on.
Skate 3 doesn’t boast much in the visual department it isn’t a bad looking game by any means, but it’s not something that will ever stun or disappoint. The audio however is phenomenal. EA Trax has compiled a great soundtrack so that you don’t have to. Black Box didn’t take any leaps or risks with Skate 3, which isn’t terrible but it’s not a good sign for the direction the series is heading. If Skate becomes a yearly release with a few new additions each time around, this could become a problem. I can’t imagine that EA would allow their series to slip from being the best in the genre and going the route of Tony Hawk, but Skate 3 doesn’t really progress the series which is almost a step back in some ways. It’s still a great game that will keep fans busy for a bit, but the franchise plays it’s safe this time around which somewhat hurt my overall opinion of the game. If you are a fan don’t let my words keep you from playing Skate 3, it’s a great game with plenty to see and do, it’s just more of the same. Let’s just hope that Skate doesn’t fall victim to becoming a yearly release as many sports games do all too often.
