SKATE

Also known as: Skate [UK]

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Skate - hands-on

Hawk-junkies, don't kill yourself yet. An open skateboarding mind bequeaths fresh hope

Words: Omeed Rafizadeh, GamesRadar US

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The moment you finish grinding across the telephone wire, a colossal sadness grips you. You drop the controller, turn off Tony and consider your life with a stare into the bathroom mirror. In the age-lines of your face you see the incalculable hours spent stacking mega-combos for a zillion-points. Your eyes spill a sorrow cavernous, and you pick up your skateboard... hold it to your cheek... and slowly begin scraping your face away with the grip-tape.

And then we materialize as luminous seraphs. We say unto you: mortal, endeth now the hysterical thumb-pulverization, the forever chains of canned animations. Seeketh innovation.

And here, innovation is realism. See, real-world skaters know the same trick will look different each time. Every ollie can have it's own style - one might be quick and tweaked to the left, one might be leisurely floated with the board slanting downwards, and infinity onwards. Skate uses an analog stick control scheme to create a heretofore unparalleled representation of these myriad possibilities. The feel contrasts entirely from the button-triggered pattern factories of Hawk. Here is stream-of-consciousness, fluidity, creativity, self-expression - almost every trick its own entity.