Skate It Review
By Dana Vinson - Posted Dec 04, 2008In this X-Play review, get ready for some extreme sports action as we review Skate It for the Nintendo Wii.
The Pros
- Excellent controls
- Good use of the Balance Board
- Lots of tricks and challenges
The Cons
- Visuals are pretty bad
You remember Skate, right. That’s the Tony Hawk killer that radically rethought the control scheme for skateboarding games. Personally, I always felt the Tony Hawk model was played out and Skate definitely injected some fresh ideas into the genre. Now, here comes Skate It for the Wii. It takes the stick flicking controls from Skate and applies some Wii Remote waggle to the mix.
Grinding in the Face of Disaster
Skateboarders are apparently always on the lookout for some fresh turf to conquer with their mad skillz. Skate It initially provides the player with the most improbable of environments, the recently ruined streets of San Vanelona. The uneven terrain and debris is, of course, perfect for practicing your tricks. Later in the game, you get to branch out and hit several “real world” locations like Paris and Rio.
After you build your custom character (where you get to choose from three body types: malnourished, anorexic, and thin) you pop into the world, work your way through a very helpful tutorial, and begin your skating career proper.
As far and narrative motivation goes, Skate It comes up pretty thin. You basically tool around each area overcoming a series of challenges that are communicated to you via an extremely annoying sidekick who just won’t shut up. He’s there to photograph and film all your cool moves. Doing well on these challenges unlocks additional locations, clothing, and board options as well as more difficult challenges.
Controls that work
But as the name of the game kind of implies, Skate It is really all about just having fun doing what you’re doing rather then wallowing in some faux edgey skater dude context (although there is a little bit of that here as well). Skate It is all about mastering the controls and surprisingly, it does a nice job utilizing what the Wii has to offer.
I say “surprisingly” because most games on the system fail so miserably. Skate It succeeds because control is tight where it needs to be and forgiving enough so that the gesture-driven controls are reasonably simple to use. There are several control options. The main two are the Wii Remote and the Remote plus the Nunchuk attachment. With just the Wii Remote, steering and spinning in the air is done by tilting the remote. I found this option a little too unwieldy when tied to the flicks and twists you need to do in order to do tricks. With the Nunchuk attached, you can use the analog stick to control steering which affords you greater control over your tricks.
Flick It, Baby!
The tricks themselves are all pretty easy to pull off. And upward flick of the remote initiates an ollie while a downward flick does a nollie. From there, your tricks in your repertoire are slight gesture variation on an up or down flick. Stringing together combos becomes an important skill in the game and to do it you need to link you tricks together with manuals (nose up or tail up). This was the hardest gesture to use reliably as you really need to tilt the remote up or down at an extreme angle to get it to work.The final control scheme uses the Wii Balance Board plus your Wii Remote. The board is used for all steering and tricks while the remote just acts as your foot push and grab buttons. Surprisingly (again) the board controls work very well once you’ve calibrated it to your liking. Steering is very tricky, but not impossible to learn. Tricks (and manuals) are very responsive so long as you take the time to get used to the controls. And that’s the key point here. It’s really a different way to think about a skateboarding game and those people who have mastered multi-button combos on a standard controller will likely be frustrated by this. Give it half a chance and you’ll come around.
Once more with feeling
The trick challenges are easy to grasp but difficult to master. You will get stuck, but at least Skate It has session markers which allows you to instantly teleport back to a spot on the map so you can quick give a failed challenge another shot. Additionally there are areas in each environment where you can move some things around so you can set up cool trick combos. It too bad the game just doesn’t have the graphical oomph of the other consoles. Skate It plays well but looks dreadful. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Wii games can (and should) look better than this.
Skate It has got it where it counts. The developers have made good use of the Wii controls and provided fans of skateboarding games a much needed change of pace. If you’re interested in a reason to drag out that little-used Wii Balance Board, give Skate It a shot.
Article By: Greg Bemis
Comments
Add a Comment