Firstly, I'd like to start with a reflection on old Tony Hawk games. They started off simple, and were pretty damn good. THUG and THUG 2 were some of the best, but THAW was showing a decline. When THP8 Came out, I thought I should buy it. It was horrible. I didn't play past the first level. It DESTROYED the series and everything I ever liked about it. I didn't even bother looking at the other new one. Then skate. comes out. I played the demo, and found it pretty cool. Now, I resolved to buying it but never got to. So, recently I picked up skate. 2, and it's pretty good I guess. Let's address some main problems:
1. No facial animation. This means that your face doesn't move. It's basically carved rock. Firstly, that's lazy as hell. I mean REALLY goddamn lazy. This is basic stuff, people. Secondly, it's creepy. Also, it's ugly. There's no reason for this.
2. It's hard. I've never played a skate game before, so I popped it on Beginner or Easy or whatever, I expect some tutorials and easy, fun challenges. It's hard as loving hell. I just spent 30 minutes trying to beat some Pro at a skate contest or something that makes no sense, and SOMEHOW, he manages to just bust out 13,000 Points like BAM. That's not even the worst. I spent 20 minutes trying to grind a rail for a challenge. This is ridiculous. Your game should ALWAYS cater to beginners to your series (ESPECIALLY ON BEGINNER MODE JESUS CHRIST). Again, this is just lazy, and really bad game design, and yet again, there is no reason for this.
3. Physics make this game sloppy. If you hit something hard enough, you fall. No matter what. Even if you hit the ground, flat, you fall. If you hit a RAMP, going down it, you will fall. This is a pain in the ass for sure.
4. DO YOU WANT TO RETRY? This message appears a lot. But, that isn't the problem. The problem is that AFTER ASKING YOU IF YOU WANT TO RETRY, IT ASKS YOU AGAIN: "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO RETRY?". Also, forget mashing A through these messages, because 'NO' is the first selection. What the HELL. 'Yes' should ALWAYS be at the top. End of story, no argument.
5. Multiplayer. It's actually quite fun, but the bitch is that you can't stray too far from your starting point, or you get that irritating white noise on your screen until you teleport back. Me and reformist luged down a mountain. It's cool because you can collide and knock each other over as well.
6. The Camera. This is the Achilles heel of the whole system that makes it so god damned frustrating. If I'm trying to grind a rail, I need to see where I'm going, right? SO THEN WHY THE forget DOES THE CAMERA SIT DIRECTLY BEHIND ME, SO RATHER THAN SEEING THE RAIL, I'M LOOKING AT MY OWN ASS? Maybe that's where the designer's heads are. Anyway, this really loving pisses me off. It's like if I put a huge black box over the center of your screen in an FPS, or centered your camera directly behind your skull in a TPS. It's poor, amateurish, lazy design, and ONCE AGAIN, there's NO GOD DAMNED REASON FOR IT.
7. PRESSING RETRY IS NOT 'FUN'. I've come to the conclusion that, just like CODWAW, the Single-Player is just mind-bendingly flawed, tedious, redundant, and most of all: Un-fun. It feels like work. The only motivation I have is to unlock more shop items, but being the monetary geniuses EA is, they offered a DLC to unlock everything anyway, and being the frustrated anxiety-ridden person I am, ill buy it just so I don't have to play the rest of it. Furthermore, there isn't even a storyline to keep me interested. Really, the only fun thing about this is Free-Skate, and the lulz that occur with 6 other people. Money can be earned in Ranked matches, so after I get the DLC, Career mode can kiss my ass. God damn I've got a headache. Score revised to 5.
8. Scott Blackwood is the designer of this game, so now I have a name to refer to.
Now, for the next segment called: "KISS MY ASS EA". Guess what happened when I first started up skate? Just take a guess. You'll never get it. No, really, you won't. Reason being is that no one in the history of the world has done something this loving stupid. This is what I see: "Sign in to EA". God damnit. Sure, that's cool if you want to upload your clips to their site and all, but that shouldn't be the starting screen. This isn't a PC game. Even Guitar Hero World Tour doesn't ask you to log in to upload/download stuff. But wait, there's more: LOTR: Conquest has DRM protection or some stuff for Multiplayer. On an Xbox. You have to log in to EA after logging in to XboxLive. There IS NO REASON FOR THIS. NO GODDAMNED REASON. This shouldn't exist. God damn, every day I hate EA a little more. Anyway:
skate 2: 3/10, because Skating is fun, extremely poor game design isn't.
EA: -10/10, because you need to be destroyed, just like Treyarch.
Score revised to 3/10.
