I recently made my way to chilly San Francisco to meet up with EA Black Box to get some hands-on with Skate 3 and its story mode and online co-op.
I’m a huge fan of skateboarding as it is; I used to skateboard a lot until about a year ago. My knee was injured and I can no longer ride, very sad I know. I’m fine with it though because EA has made it possible for me to once again enjoy skateboarding with Skate 3.
Career Mode
In Skate 3 you are playing the same skateboarding legend/pro that you became in the last two games, but this time you aren’t trying to rise to fame once more or become a pro all over again. This time around the goal is to create a team and a company and to sell skateboards. Along the journey to becoming the Donald Trump of skateboards you will meet and snag new team members to add to your crew. When someone informs you of a person you should check out and sign on to your team you assume control of the other character for one challenge to join the team. For example, a guy calls you up and tells you to check out this kid because he is really great at skating, so you accept and go and meet this guy. After that cut scene you assume control of the kid you meet to do a photo challenge, you choose where to put the camera and you land the trick that it asks you to do then you choose the picture you like best and edit it. There are all sorts of things you can do with the new photo editor; you can adjust depth of field, brightness, saturation, and so on. Once that challenge is complete you now have a new team member who will then wear your teams gear and you will then see them skating around in your single player world.
A really unique and innovative feature about teams that I quite enjoy is when you are meeting and getting a new teammate you are asked to create them, so you then go into the create a skater editor and do what you would do for your own skater. Here is the catch: you don’t have to create a skater if your friends own and play Skate 3. You can import their characters to your team and world and you can then see your friends skating around in your own world. So whatever clothes and styles they are using will show each time you start the game, so if they are online and they change their whole outfits, their skaters will then change in your world to match. I can’t say I’ve seen that in any other game. This is a nice thing to be able to say because when you are able to say that, you know a game is raising the bar in creativity or innovation.
Along the way in your career you will start getting quite wealthy and then be able to obtain a Team HQ. In other words, it is a giant factory that you can create your own park in. Black Box didn’t show us Skate Park but I can only imagine how awesome it will be after everything I experienced during my play session.
Online Co-Op
I personally did not have a lot of time in the co-op side of things, but from what I did see you have your normal death races, H.O.R.S.E type game play otherwise known as S.K.A.T.E, Hall of Meat, while also adding some new ones such as Own the Lot, 1Up, and Domination. The interesting thing this year is that the single player portion of the game is fully playable in co-op, so if you have a challenge you are doing you can choose to invite friends to come help you complete the challenge with you and progress through the career mode, while doing that not only do you earn board sales for yourself but your friend(s) will also earn board sales back in their single player game.
As you can tell the game is heavily based around TEAMS this year; you create everything on your team, from the logos to the clothing, the boards, everything. There is a section in the online area called Team.Finder which helps you find a team that is suited to your play style “basically like clans in games like Call of Duty.” In these teams you can choose to all play together online and compete against other teams to rise in ranks on the leaderboards, or you can just free skate with each other and film skateboarding videos. Everything is there for the community to get creative with, you can share everything. You can share your skate parks, graphics, spots and pretty much anything else that is user created.
HARDCORE Mode
All right, if you are a hardcore skateboarder and have always wanted an almost realistic simulation skateboarding game, well you are going to want to put your game difficulty on Hardcore mode.
That is right this years Skate game has difficulty levels from easy to normal and to of course hardcore mode. The difference between them? To start, easy will always let you pop your ollies and tricks as high as the game will physically let you, you won’t bail as easy, you will stick to grinds way easier, basically makes the game really easy for those people who aren’t that good at the game. Normal of course is the original flavor of Skate, from Skate 1 to 2, if you like how those two games skated and don’t care for more realism then you will want to stay on normal. Now hardcore mode is where the game drastically changes in a fantastically good way.
Hardcore mode dramatically alters the physics in the game and tunes them down to a really realistic level, so not only do your tricks pop way lower than in normal mode but your speed is cut way down as well. It should take at least 5 pushes with your foot to get to a decently fast speed, so you will mostly be hitting those rails and ledges at a more realistic speed with 3 or so pushes. You can still ollie somewhat high if you flick it hard enough but it is a little more challenging to get a lot of air. With the physics change comes less grind magnetism. Meaning, everything that is grind-able is way harder to get on. It won’t magically suction you to that spot to grind just because you are in proximity with it, you literally will have to line up your trick and land exactly on to the ledge or rail or bank that you are trying to grind on.
Not only is it extremely difficult even for a seasoned Skate veteran like myself but it just makes the game so much more rewarding when you do land that trick that you have been trying to nail for the past half an hour. I cannot stress how much different the game feels when put into hardcore mode. Overall it adds a huge sense of accomplishment even with the simplest tricks or gaps. The physics are tuned down so much that you can actually fail a kick flip on flat ground, something that was not possible in the last two games. That in itself is something a lot of skateboarding realism fans will love. It actually feels like skateboarding—although with a controller—but it nails the realism with hardcore mode.
You can even skate in hardcore difficulty while in online co-op, although this can be quite a disadvantage if you are doing death races, since you don’t gain full speed from 3 pushes like people in normal difficulty do. This may be tweaked to only allow hardcore mode in free skate but we will see. I can see it now, people selecting easy mode just to blaze through the multiplayer achievements.
Overall I’m very pleased with Black Box’s next skateboard offering. It not only manages to completely raise the bar but it manages to change it completely with the hardcore mode. I can see hardcore skateboarding fans playing this game for a long time to come. The coolest things in the game are still yet to be revealed. So keep an eye out and we shall bring you more Skate 3 info as it drops.
Check out the new teams videos below:
Teamz 1
Teamz 2
Also don’t be afraid to check out the new screenshots in our gallery below! Keep ridin!
