{"id":18369,"date":"2010-05-12T21:09:03","date_gmt":"2010-05-12T20:09:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.razorianfly.com\/?p=18369"},"modified":"2010-05-12T21:09:03","modified_gmt":"2010-05-12T20:09:03","slug":"skate-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/12\/skate-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Skate It"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Gameplay [rating:5\/5]
\nControls [rating:5\/5]
\nGraphics\/Sounds [rating:4\/5]
\n[rating:overall]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I’ve never been a particularly sporty person, but I have fond memories of playing skateboarding games on the Playstation One and Two. Okay I don’t know my Ollie from my Nollie, but it never stopped me enjoying them. Since getting my iPhone I’ve been keeping a look out in the AppStore for a good Skateboarding game and maybe, just maybe, Skate It by EA Games might just hit that mark.<\/p>\n

In case you’re not familiar with EA’s skateboarding franchise, Skate was first released for the Xbox\u00c2\u00a0360 and used a new control scheme to add more immersion to the game, no longer could you hit a button and perform a 720 pop shuvit, now you had to manipulate the analog sticks in the right way to pull off any decent moves. This made it harder than the likes of the Tony Hawks games, but got a large following for exactly this reason.<\/p>\n

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Skate It is a “port” from the Nintendo DS, but everything has been tweaked for the iPhone to provide an experience that takes full advantage of the iPhones control capabilities. In fact, I don’t really see this as a port at all, but rather than the game is based on the DS version.<\/p>\n

Given that the original Skate games had innovative controls I suppose this is where I should start here. The game makes use of the accelerometer controls to steer, crouch and brake. I have to say that personally I think the accelerometer controls in this game are pretty much spot on. They feel very responsive, even on my 3G and unlike most games where my first thoughts are to switch to direction buttons I am more than happy to use the accelerometer control scheme. (It is worth noting that the game does not offer a directional button control option, but I still maintain that even if it did, I wouldn’t want it).<\/p>\n

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As for the other controls, there is a button on the bottom left which you can press and hold to speed up and another button on the top right which you press to grab your board during tricks. Perhaps my favourite part of the controls is the way you perform tricks themselves. When you swipe on the screen a virtual skateboard appears and depending on the direction of your swipe determines what trick is performed. There are a large number of tricks that can be performed within this game, and thankfully, you are able to pause the game at any time to view your Trick book which will show you how to perform each type of trick. These range from easy to advanced depending on the shape \/ number of swipes required to perform the trick.<\/p>\n

The game offers plenty to do as well. First is your skater who you can customize with a decent number of options. Additional clothing and boards are also unlocked as you move through the game. When you are finally ready to skate, you can either choose free-ride (at the start of the game you have access to 3 areas to skate around) or Career.If you’ve played any other skateboarding game than career mode won’t be that unfamiliar to you. Each skate area has a variety of goals which must be achieved, these vary from performing a certain trick to racing against other skaters. a nice touch to me is that as you progress you need to revisit old areas as further goals are unlocked. With 20 different locations to skate through, you won’t be finished with this game anytime soon.<\/p>\n

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As you progress through the career mode, you’ll unlock additional areas which then become available in free-skate mode, but you’ll also be rewarding with the additional clothes and skateboards that I mentioned earlier. You will also unlock various pieces of scenery and obstacles which you can place into your own park. That’s right, the game comes with a park editor allowing you to create your own skate park. I haven’t unlocked to much for this, but can’t wait to play on in career mode and unlock more items for my park.<\/p>\n

The graphics are nice and generally smooth, not perfect, sometimes when I hit a wall at speed the camera rotates behind the wall for a few seconds. The animation of your skater when you bail also isn’t perfect, but I can forgive it these little glitches due to it being so playable. This playability however, may be down to how well you can pick up the controls, learning simple tricks felt quite intuitive to me, but depending on your preferences you may struggle and give up. If you do struggle I would say, persevere, don’t give up and lose out on the pure skating joy that this game provides.<\/p>\n

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I’m having such a great time playing this game, much more than I did when I finally managed to get a copy of Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 (which still isn’t available in the UK). Having played the two I know which one gets pride of place on my iPhone, and it’s Skate It. Whilst Tony Hawks is nice, it just feels old, unrealistic and cramped. If you want nostalgia and a more traditional control scheme (that when I played it were ok, but not great) then maybe you should get\/wait for Tony hawks. But, if you want to play something fresh, innovative and downright entertaining, Skate It is definitely worth a look.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve never been a particularly sporty person, but I have fond memories of playing skateboarding games on the Playstation One and Two. Okay I don’t know my Ollie from my Nollie, but it never stopped me enjoying them. Since getting my iPhone I’ve been keeping a look out in the AppStore for a good Skateboarding game and maybe, just maybe, Skate It by EA Games might just hit that mark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":441,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2127,16,17],"tags":[252,2247,1637],"class_list":["post-18369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-app-store","category-games-app-store","category-iphone","category-ipod","tag-ea-games","tag-hereistrev","tag-skate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18369"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18695,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18369\/revisions\/18695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arronhirst.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}