Skate 2 Demo impressions: Easy-fication syndrome

So I was one of those people who was a HUGE Tony Hawk fan. I loved the first two games, but as the third rolled around (sorry) I was kind of beginning to feel the series start to slip. And slip it did. Into a giant pool of gooey product placement and horrible game design decisions.

So when I played the Tony Hawk's Project 8 demo, I rejoiced. It seemed to be what I had been looking for. A skating game that properly represented skating. Thank god I rented the retail version. What I expected was realism, what I got was a guy in A BEAVER SUIT asking me to SKITCH a REMOTE CONTROLLED CAR so I could jump up and break open the LARGE IRON GATES OF MY UPPER CLASS CUL-DE-SAC. After playing it, I blacked out, fell off the couch and woke up tasting copper.

Next up was Skate from Black Box. I followed this game closely for a long time, ever sceptical of their 'realistic skating'. But after playing the demo...a thousand or so times, I was sold. This was the one. Physics meant something. Grinding too practice. It was about short runs of solid tricks, rather than finding and jumping over 6 hobos and it looked THE BALLS. I played the retail to death.

Skate's one downfall was its difficulty. My girlfriend started leaving the room when I'd play it, claiming that I'd become some kind of profanity monster. She may be right. But it was rewarding difficulty. All the moves where there from the get go, you just had to learn them.

So here comes Skate 2. The demo dropped last week and wow, are there some changes. I'm going to hold off judging the graphics until retail, but the demo shows a much higher frame rate, but at the cost of polys and texture detail. The controls remain pretty much the same, there's just a bit more button pressing rather than relying on the sticks and triggers alone.

So where's the easy-fication? The physics. Gone are the tiny fuck up crashes of Skate, it's much easier to land tricks now. It also seems faster and jumps feel a lot higher. The slower pace that allowed you to line tricks up has also been sped up, along with a seemingly higher jump, changes the overall feel of skating around.

Good thing? Bad thing? I don't know just yet.

Full Review incoming.

-N

PS I didn't mention Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, because it felt like I was kicking a man when he was down...with a dead horse.