I'm all stuffy today - probably alergies? I've been keeping busy - nothing really productive, but busy none the less. So, what to blog about... hmm... How about gaming!?

I picked up the new skateboarding video game - Skate. It's my first purchase of an Electronic Arts game. So far, I love it! It's a big step above any skateboarding game to-date. Tony Hawk held the crown for a long time but this game blows it away. The career mode is deep - lots of challenges,competitions, customizing, etc.

The controls are tricky! Lots of innovation here. If you've played any of the EA sports games in the past year or two, you probably recognize the right-stick control (Fight Night 3, Madden hit-stick, etc.). The right stick in this game controls your board and the left stick controls your body. So, you flick down then up on the right stick to do an olie. Down then up on the right stick and hold left on the left stick to do a 180 spin...

Get it? Everything varies from there. Grabs are handled with the trigger buttons and your D-Pad will give your skater a little style with 'taunt' animations mapped to each direction. EA really took advantage of xbox live with the addition of Skate.TV and skate.Reel. The online aspects of the game go beyond just multi player. During any part of your game, you can pause and replay your last line of tricks. There is nothing innovative about a replay, however with Skate you can edit your replays - changing camera angles, speed of the video, lens effects etc. You can then upload your video or photo masterpiece for the community to watch. Using Skate.Reel you can browse videos of your friends or random gamers from all over the world. Each video and photo can be rated and viewed in-game or on the skate.ea.com website. Skate.TV allows you to be a spectator of anyones multi player games. So, you can go watch the highest ranking skaters in the game and see what they are up to, or just go check out what your friends are doing. Below are two videos I made over the weekend:





I added the music here at work, using music from the game of course :)
Google Video does a crummy compression of the videos, if you want to see higher quality versions, check them out here:

R080T Skate. - Ledge drop
R080T Skate. - Old Town Syndrom

:)

Labels: skateboarding, video games, xbox 360