Requiem for a Full Stop

The future of Skate?

Okay, I have to admit I’m a whore for EA. I try not to be, I really do, but they’ve put out a ton of titles recently that have tickled my fancy (so to speak). The most recent being Skate 2, which is a great game. It definitely takes the elements of skate. that worked and adds to them and improves in a couple of major ways.

But I’m not here to discuss the successes of this game, ’cause I’d have to spend at least 300 boring words doing so when every other reviewer and their mother has already done so. What I want to talk about are a couple issues that some might argue as nitpicks, but we live in a world where Han shooting first is viewed as an important issue in A New Hope, so I think it’s fair to say there’s an audience for nitpicking in this fanboy world we call the internet.

Firstly, the character customization has gotten a bit more intense than in the previous version, but along with that comes the addition of an array of foolish clothing. While I think the inclusion of the Trilby hat was warranted as an homage to Yahtzee, including a redneck beer helmet and a regal crown just seem asinine.

Secondly, the scale of Skate 2 seems to have gotten huge all of a sudden. I was fine with skate. making me clear street gaps and use spillways as half pipes, but now a larger portion of the game seems to be centered around the X-Games style mega ramps, many of which are even passed off as natural structures that fit within New San Vanelona’s architecture such as a pile of debris from a demolition that just so happens to have a perfectly smooth surface and ramp at the end. Can you say “impossible?”

If I recall correctly, skate. was introduced as a way to go back to the skateboarding roots that the Tony Hawk franchise has strayed so far from. If these wardrobe additions and scale increases are indicative of design philosophy, in Skate 5 we’ll be doing sticker-slaps onto skyscrapers while wearing superhero costumes.

My biggest beef with Skate 2 though, is one that is so minor that I’m probably the only one who even noticed it, or cared enough to give it a second thought: the title. I’m sure a ton of game writers everywhere were grateful to see that Skate 2 did away with the period that wreaked havoc on their reviews due to Microsoft Word’s auto-correct feature. You know what though? I reviewed skate. when I used to work for my college paper, and even after wrestling with the formatting to do away with all the unnecessary spaces and mid-sentence capital letters, I still admired that little period.

skate. was so indie and non-conformist that even basic rules of capitalization and punctuation couldn’t hold it down. So it’s a shame to see Skate 2 selling out, even if it is only to Strunk and White.

-That Guy

PS: In a better world, we can all get along.