EA and Black Box did a great job with Skate. They knocked the living crap out of the Tony Hawk series, and reinvented the skateboarding games genre.
Skate 2 was more of the same, with better everything, but it still isn’t flawless. Its DLC gives some extra flavor, but even so, it’s not that great. First of all, the filmer’s pack costs a bit too much, and still isn’t able to cut shoots like Tony Hawks Proving Ground. It’s also a tough price to pay for something that should’ve already been bundled in the game.
However, even with the latest DLC coming out in a week (Maloof Money Cup Pack), which is still just a park(and said to have some newhall of meat feats), it’s getting boring. I’ve recently praised Skate 2 as the best skateboarding game ever(my review for bngaming.no), but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement.
As such, here’s my wish list for DLC in skate 2, or feats to be added to Skate 3.
- Euphoria driven bails.
For those who have played “The Force Unleashed” or “GTA IV”, you might’ve noticed that you rarely never see the same fall and death animation twice. This is because they’re using an engine called “euphoria”(www.naturalmotion.com). In short, euphoria is an engine that gives each character, playable or not, his own nervous system, and awareness. The characters will cling on to objects or do their best to land on their feet in order to survive, instead of becoming ragdolls the second their bodies are lifted off the ground. This is most noticeable in TFU, though.
This would for Skate mean that instead of controlling your bails to an insane degree(they always end up looking unnatural), your character would do his/her best to stay on their feet, and would invoke rolls and chrotch-breakers where it seems “natural”. For example, a euphoria driven character bailing on a rail, to find both of its feet planted on the sides of the rail, would smash his nuts to the rail, grab on to the rail, and most likely fall off it, writhing in pain. As it is in Skate 2, however, they fall mostly lifeless, with the slight control of the player.
Euphoria would be a great addition, and all bails would be random, and life-like. The hall of meat would be filled with real bails, instead of user-controlled bails that make the character tornado into cars.
- Flatland tricks
Skate 2 “doubles the bag of tricks”, but the addition of inverts, foot-plants, bonelesses and hippy jumps isn’t enough to make it really great. It’s still a great game, don’t get me wrong, but one of the biggest features of the Tony Hawk games, in my humblest of opinions, is the addition of flatland tricks. If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, I suggest looking up Rodney Mullen.
- The “impossible” flip.
Did you know there’s a fliptrick called “impossible”? most TH gamers do, and most skaters too. The flip consists of the board being ollied, and flipped around either of your feet and landing again. Simply put. It’s strange that Black Box didn’t add it to either games, as a flickit control for it wouldn’t exactly be hard to code. Think of it (analog-stick-wise) as an ollie, and a 360 spin around the stick. Makes sense. You jump, and flip the board around your leg.
- Actual Skate parks.
Now, I won’t complain about San Vanelona, or even San Vanelona, but it’d be damn cool to throw actual skate parks from around the globe directly into the city itself, instead of the current DLC packs offering them as rather lonely spawn points you can’t simply skate into. Instead, you have to hit the menu, select spawn points, and downloadable. The parks are isolated, and although fun, it’d be better to just stumble upon them instead of having to spawn in and out. More seamlessness=more fun. More authentic real-life parks=more awesomeness.
- Better off-board system
As-is, the Skate 2 off-board system is anything but great. in fact the only times used is when you encounter stairs or moveable objects. Your movement is so damn limited, it’s not even fun. The ability to jump over low walls with a little hand-helpage wouldn’t be the worst of additions, and some basic climbing wouldn’t hurt either. I’m not saying it should be anything like the parkour-inspired American Wasteland where you run up walls like nothing, but it should include more everyday abilities. For example, in Skate 2, you’re more likely to get up a steep grass hill using your board than your legs. Now there’s something that makes sense, right?
Exactly.
- More character customization.
Again, I’m not complaining about the current system here, but the variations are mostly based on haircuts, apparel and clothes than the actual face here. I’m not saying it should be like Oblivion or Fallout 3, but a bit more customization wouldn’t hurt. For example, the general head shape is mostly the same, and your height isn’t exactly damn controllable. Nor is your weight, and I know not everyone necessarily wants a brad pitt-like body. Granted, most do, but still.
- Longer, better career
Seems like all you have to do become the number 1 skater in the world is to know all the tricks, and make yourself popular by running into pro’s here and there, and beating their challenges. By doing so, it’ll take a month at max, to be the best. Seriously, I like the whole story driven thing, but it could be better. And longer.
- Hardcore mode
In lack of better word to describe it. Add some RPG flair to the game. When starting, you’re actually excused as being the same character as you were in Skate 1, therefore, it’s actually seemingly logical you would know all the tricks in the game instantaneously. However, in the first game, all you had to do to do a quad kickflip, was find a large enough gap, and do a kickflip, whilst holding the stick.
In real life, however, just pulling of a single one is hard enough. What I’m proposing here is a game mode that is called something like “hardcore”, or even as cliché as “hard”. In this mode, you’ll play through the game as normal, only you have to learn all the tricks. Imagine a kickflip that wasn’t pulled off on the first try, but rather took some time to learn. I’m not saying you have to use weeks to learn the basics of skating, but a couple of minutes to learn the most basics of flips would be kinda cool. Not for the casual gamers, obviously, but that’s why it’d ought to be optional. Also, the mode would render your character getting better at flips all the time, and once the flip’s xp is maxed, you’d have to do some serious faulty jumps in order for it to fail.
Yep, that’s about it. I’ll add more if I can think of more, but for now, this alone would make an outstanding sequel, or some downright genious DLC content that could even cost up to $29.99 without feeling like too much.
OFF-TOPIC: As I’m posting this, the current hits for the blog is 1138. Get it? Huh? HUH? Friggin’ google it.
