This years big skateboarding hit shall be heading to your local game shop on May 11th, so get ready to scrape up some cash and pre-order or do whatever it is you do when your favorite franchise game is released every year.
It seems Black Box and EA are looking to make Skate a yearly franchise indeed, with the recent failure from Tony Hawk known as Ride it would be stupid for them not to continue dominating the skateboarding genre. With such a gimmicky feeling game and peripheral Tony Hawk was doomed from the start (sorry Tony), making Skate the go-to series for the last few years for skateboarding fans young and old. Talking with one of the Skate developers he mentioned hearing from a few of the pros in their game that Tony Hawk’s own son plays Skate instead of his father’s games, now that is funny.
Enter Shaun White, snowboarding legend and leader of the stop hating gingers club… not really. He is actually a snowboarding prodigy and also a pro skateboarder, the only skateboarder to win gold medals in the Winter X-Games and regular X-Games. Mr. White has announced that he too is releasing a skateboarding game, albeit his snowboarding games weren’t all that popular. The exception being the Wii editions since they did create a whole other game just for the Wii. Rumor has it that the Shaun White skateboarding game is a Wii only title, if this is true then Skate shouldn’t have to worry about competition because their core audience are on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Is skateboarding a genre that needs another contender coming out to butt heads? Absolutely, if there wasn’t competition then Black Box wouldn’t have to really try and innovate and add more cool and exciting things to each and every game. Take the Tony Hawk games over the years for example, they started out HUGE then slowly declined because Neversoft didn’t really make an effort to change the game in so it ended up feeling bland and recycled. We’re not worried about EA and Black Box doing this with Skate because they won’t. They won’t because Black Box is a team made up of quite a few real life skateboarders, and they have the passion and the know-how to bring skateboarding into game form and give all the skateboarders out there a game they deserve and a game they want. Overall what skateboard-gamers have wanted over the last 5 years or so was realism, and in the first Skate they got a taste of what a realistic skateboarding game felt liked and loved it.
This year Skate 3 is bringing an entire new city named Port Carverton to the plate and from what I have played of the game already it is a fantastic city. It isn’t just the city that makes the game fantastic but it’s the whole package this year, particularly the new content. You got famous actor and old professional skateboarder Jason Lee portraying a character he calls “Coach Frank” that teaches you everything you need to know about Skate and skateboarding, while being completely hilarious. Then you add in Skate.Park which is a mode that allows you to create your own skate parks from the ground up, modify the terrain, add and move anything and everything you want. The amazing thing about the Skate.Park tool is just how much you can do. Skateboarders around the world are going to be re-creating their favorite parks that they have skated at or seen in films. Let’s not forget Hardcore difficulty mode now, which makes the physics of the game way more true to life and a LOT more realistic. That is one addition that has a lot of skateboarding fans really excited because, let’s face it, the people who buy this game are either skateboarders or are fans of skateboarding. Besides, word on the street is that hardcore mode is the bees knees.
Last but not least you have a new tool called the object dropper, now Black Box has not went into detail about this yet they have only been spitting out little clues here and there as to what you can do with it. Most likely it will be a tool that allows you to drop and move any type of moveable object within the world. Players will probably have to unlock more objects to drop as you go along throughout your career in the game. In due time they should be releasing new information about it.
Now let’s have a look at the Skate.School video that was just released
Pretty awesome, Jason Lee is one hell of a character, although it is probably safe to say he regrets Alvin and the Chipmunks. Another cool fact about Jason Lee, if you noticed in that video there were a lot of signs that said Stereo on them. Jason Lee is the founder and creator of Stereo Skateboards so they were able to snag that sponsor in the game just by bringing in Jason.
Now here is a look at the final “Pro Roster” which is all of the Professional Skateboarders within the game:
* Andrew Reynolds
* John Cardiel
* Benny Fairfax
* John Rattray
* Braydon Szafranski
* Josh Kalis
* Chris Cole
* Lizard King
* Chris Haslam
* Lucas Puig
* Colin McKay
* Mark Appleyard
* Dan Drehobl
* Mike Carroll
* Danny Way
* P.J. Ladd
* Darren Navarrette
* Pat Duffy
* Dennis Busenitz
* Ray Barbee
* Eric Koston
* Rob Dyrdek
* Jason Dill
* Ryan Gallant
* Jason Lee (as Coach Frank)
* Ryan Smith
* Jerry Hsu
* Terry Kennedy
* Joey Brezinski
There it is, the final roster. No more pro skaters to announce so enjoy that final list and look for the game on store shelves May 11th.
