Skate City Heroes review

This open-world boarding title is inspired by Tony Hawk and Jet Set Radio (and by ‘inspired’, we mean it’s lawyer time), giving you a choice of rad dudes to play as in a shiny futuristic metropolis. After a dastardly robot called Virus captures one of your friends, you have to roam around completing city-wide challenges to placate him and get your dead-eyed buddy back. The setting isn’t too bad, but the world’s so flat and ugly there’s almost no joy in actually skating about.

The controls are pretty intuitive – apart from the truly ghastly balance board support – so it doesn’t take too long to nail the basic moves. Jumping is handled with the A button, while grinding is as simple as tapping B and making slight tilt adjustments with the remote. However, many of the harder tricks – which, according to their descriptions, should be easy to pull off – can often be nightmarish, requiring impossibly fussy motion inputs.

For anyone who’s find it awkwardplaying skating games, Skate City Heroes’ accessibility will seem like a breath of fresh air, but once you get over the initial joy of being able to perform most of these moves, you’ll soon wonder why on Earth you’re bothering. We’d rather walk.

May 27, 2009