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Skate's San Vansterdam is a miracle of line design. This city exists to be shredded to pieces and every corner I coast around offers a spot that demands I push my board towards it. There's the man-made water feature which I spend a morning ollieing, fastplanting, and grinding over in the Upper Cut, while a lunchtime session with a friend sees us scale a tower just outside the, um, delightfully named Chum Bucket stadium so we can drop into a huge ramp and fire ourselves across wavy halfpipes.
And yet, it's a simple stairset in Hedgemont that devours an evening. On the left, a careening slope. On the right, a 20ft staircase with a trickier-than-it-looks rail curving down the middle. Once I make it to the bottom down either of these obstacles, there's a gap over a grassy bank. Do I mix in a quick lil' christ air? Or a triple heelflip? Or maybe I should go back to the top and do a coffin down the slope instead?
Birdman vs San Van
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 review: "A nostalgic, must-play hit for fans"
If you didn't grow up on a diet of pop-punk soundtracks and Coach Frank yelling yea-yeah at you, then it's understandable that the great skate renaissance may have passed you by. Let's start with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4. The Birdman's second remake of the decade is a nostalgia play through and through, recreating what made the series so moreish.
The series' version of skateboarding is all about reflexes under pressure, the score ticking up as you string an increasingly hefty combo across tightly designed maps, the sensation of flowing though levels committed to memory while hammering away at tricks with thumb-ruiningly intense speeds as intoxicating as ever.
But THPS 3+4 doesn't alter the fundamentals. In fact, the game places a 2:00 minute time limit on all its levels, even ones originally designed to be played without them. The result is that THPS 3+4 is a distillation of what skating games used to be, just without a yearly release cycle magnifying its flaws.
Skate, on the other hand, is a more daring beast. It's not a love letter to the past, but a path forward that's still being plotted. Ditching the $60 boxed release model, going free-to-play in Early Access and forgoing the usual single player focus of a career mode, this is an experience designed to be shared with others, honing in on what the series has always been about: a realistic depiction of skating.
Thrashing it out
And that is where fans have been divided over Skate. Because while the flick-it trick system and physics meet the brief, the art direction is undeniably more cartoony. Your character is the epitome of this, boasting a Fortnite-esque sheen and a smoothness that can feel at odds with the scrapes, grazes, and grime that you'd accumulate from laying tricks down across a city. Likewise, San Van is a clean city where everything has been designed for you to take advantage of it - something that dilutes the transgression of skating something you're not supposed to.
However, the art style is a positive, as it allows the game's greater strength to shine through. The world design is impeccable, a harmonious mix of clearly designed skate parks and more naturalistic spots that create a rhythm to the city, where you'll easily hop between points as something new catches your eye. While the lack of challenges has been another loud complaint - and for what it's worth, I agree they currently feel too rudimentary - it's only highlighted how little I actually want them right now, as I'm more than happy skating this city to see what I can discover for myself.
Figuring out how a spot works and then adding more complexity to my line is far more rewarding than a t-shirt I'll never put on my character. This simplicity in both art style and design is crucial as the game evolves, with the first glimpses of this coming from the Skate early access roadmap.
If San Van had been too realistic, new areas run the risk of jarring with what's there, breaking up the balance that the world currently has. As someone who has spent a summer watching Beavis and Butthead run around Warzone, I can tell you how much damage odd juxtapositions can do to a game. This isn't to say that Skate is flawless. AI assistant VEE gives off DJ Atomika vibes, something you should never aim for. The onslaught of cosmetic packs is something I've no interest in and the Early Access jank reminds this is early, early days for Skate.
Still, I just can't tear myself away from San Van. By stripping away the structure of what's come before and doubling down on the joy of freeform discovery, Skate feels like it's onto something sustainable. After years without a skateboarding game like it, I'm itching to see its version of the future… right after I try that stairset again.
Check out the best free-to-play games right now if you're looking for something to dive into or, or look ahead to what's coming next with our roundup of new games for 2025.
