Skate It (DS) review

Time and time again, a portable system comes out and software developers immediately start to think: “Wow, it’s a handheld with better graphics! Let’s port our console blockbuster titles over to it! No one will notice the difference!” Sorry to burst your bubble, but you guys aren’t slick, and people always notice. While Skate It isn’t necessarily a bad game, it could be a lot better, or maybe it would be best if it didn’t exist so we could just imagine what it would have been like. There's a lot of content here, and you really won't know what you're missing if you've never played the ps3 or 360 original games, but after having invested a lot of time with them, there's a serious lack of quality that you'll notice, and for people that can only play this title on the ds, while the controls, mechanics, and physics are mostly there, the fun part of the gameplay isn't, which may make you wonder why it generated so much buzz and positive reviews on the next gen consoles.

Graphics – 6\10

Remember back when Lara Croft in Tomb Raider 1 was considered the most attractive video game female ever? Without a doubt, she was known for her massive mammaries. My theory has always been that it wasn't a design decision, it's because of the triangular polygons they were working with, meaning she was forced into having pyramids attached to her body. Skate It on DS suffers from this same bug. For unknown reasons, whenever you try to create a skater, they're going to look horrendous and there's nothing you can really do about it. While the game does offer a lot of licensed merchandise from real skateboarding brands, everything is so blurry that you can't really tell what it is that you're looking at. As a result, you could simply be wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a ds on it, but they could call it an Element shirt and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The character models themselves are incredibly stiff, and I understand it's a ds, but...I had no clue corpses could skate. Speaking of corpses, when you do bail, which will happen a lot, gone are the ragdoll animations, which is understandable. In their place is a flying concrete brick that they call your skater, which moves in an incredibly disjointed, jerky manner. The trick animations really aren't that great to look at either, but at least the environments are all fairly decent. There's not too much of an issue with pop-in, which is mainly a result of being in closed areas (the community center level is just the community center. gone are the days of skating in the streets.) The major downside here is just the fact that they're trying to do a lot with the graphics, which I do appreciate, but it didn't pay off as much as you could have hoped for, and the worst part is that it's sometimes hard to tell where the street ends and a ledge begins since there aren't too many shadows or shading effects, meaning that the grey block you just flew into is going to cause your brick to fly through the air, and then grab their knee, even though they flew headfirst into a wall. Maybe next time, EA!


Sound – 4\10

First thing's first: 4 songs as a soundtrack is NOT a soundtrack. While I realize that this is a DS game with fully 3d graphics, it feels like the soundtrack was kind of an afterthought. The few songs that are present eventually become overwhelmingly grating as you hear them over and over and over again in a single sitting, meaning that I eventually just turned off the sound completely and played my own music instead. As far as sound effects are concerned, they're alright, but they just don't feel as satisfying as I'd like. Of course the sound of the wheels rolling is great, but the actual pop of the board when you're doing a flip trick just isn't what you'd want it to be. There aren't really any voices in the game aside from random grunts here and there, so I can't really complain about the voice acting or anything. The sound department as a whole is incredibly disappointing, which is sad since the quality of sound in some of their other handhelds, such as FIFA is incredibly well done, meaning that they know they can do a lot better than this.

Gameplay – 7/10

Skate It actually manages to use the same basic control scheme as the console versions, and for many of the tricks, it translates fine. Manualing is done by placing your finger/stylus in the bottom of the skateboard shown on the touch screen and pulling down slightly until you find it. Ollies and Nollies are done by starting from the top or bottom of the board and sliding up or down, respectively. Kickflips and heelflips are done by starting at the bottom and flicking off towards the edge of the board. All of the basic tricks are well done, even extending to the grinds. On the downside, the grabs never really clicked with me, since you had to use the trigger and moving the board on the bottom screen in various directions, and while you can tell they put thought into it, it just doesn't work all that well. Worst of all is the advanced flip tricks, which you have to witness firsthand to see how butchered they are. For unknown reasons, when you want to do a 360 flip, you drag your stylus from the right of the screen towards the middle of the board, then you draw a semicircle, which no matter how hard I try, I just don't see any correlation to how you actually perform the trick in real life or in the console versions. At least they gave it a try and did something unique though, and the gameplay isn't that bad as a result, just don't expect this to be the same as the original console titles. You should also know that instead of being a free roam experience, you have different levels that you can visit, each representing major locations from the first game and a few extra real cities thrown in, which makes up for the lack of being able to cruise all over San Van.


Overall – 6/10

It's a shame that at it's base, it's not a bad game if you just consider the gameplay, but the graphics and sound really do drag it down significantly. Sometimes they grey textures aren't shaded that well, making it hard for you to see that thing you're about to roll into. The lack of a free roam is probably the most jarring thing of all the first time you play the game, since the original had that heavily integrated into the game, but thanks to the number of areas that you actually can unlock and visit, along with the real life locations, it's not that bad for a portable game. The best part about the sounds is that you can turn them off, meaning that you don't have to listen to that horrid soundtrack or "OOMPH!" a billion times if you wish. There's also a character creation system in place, which isn't exactly expansive, but I'm sure some people out there will be able to sink their teeth into that until they realize that you can't actually make a skater that looks like you because of the graphics engine, but it's always nice to have in game. For people that are more into just completing objectives instead of freeskating, there's plenty in each area, which means that you'll end up traveling between them to complete some, then finding a new area with even more challenges until you exhaust them all. Skate It really isn't that terrible when you look at the game itself along with the decent skate park editor and creation aspects. Anyone out there that really wants something different might actually enjoy it, but if you weren't impressed by the console games or were completely into them, the changes are incredibly jarring without altering the realistic gameplay and you might do yourself a favor by saving up for Skate 2 or another game instead.