Despite saying that I was going to pass on this one because I figured I’d had my fill of sandbox games for a while, and that I was going away for 2 weeks anyway and wouldn’t have time to get through it, I went ahead and picked this up anyway… I’m sure a couple of you would be interested to hear how it’s been going, so I wanted to throw some stuff out there before I left.

I’m about 20 hours in, I am an easily distracted player, so the amount of spontaneous quests that come up is a bit overwhelming, and my tendency to react to any blip on the map, or critter crossing my path, is getting to me and the animations to go through the motions of getting on and off the horse, skinning and looting kills and hogtying folks is all starting to feel too slow and tedious. I’m learning that most of these blips should be ignored entirely but it pains me to do it… it’s just less painful than actually doing the task.

I’ve got to say though, the atmosphere created through the audio and visuals is amazing, it really feels like the old west to a degree, I don’t think that there were as many fiends as there is in this game though. It really feels like you’re introduced to people and you help them along their own little sub-plot, while they entice you with their carrot on a stick to progress your own story… If John Marston is as bad ass as he is constantly made out to be through out the game, he would have murdered these folks long ago for their shenanigans, but alas, you must play along.

Its a pretty good game so far, but I’m not fully understanding the near perfect scores it is getting in the major outlets. Apart from the setting and story (again, you can make a case for perfect scores in those categories alone), nothing sets this game apart from a game play perspective. It’s really hanging its hat on the ‘Dead-Eye’ functionality for duels and combat in general, it is little more than the ‘bullet-time’ functionality we’ve seen in many games since Max Payne did it (I don’t think it was the first game to use the feature, but it was the first one that had a big audience I believe). It does go through a bit of an evolution, from manually pulling the trigger in standard bullet time, to auto-marking the targets as you hover over them, to manually marking the targets while in bullet time, and that was kinda of nice since it’s really the bit of character evolution in the game at all. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I don’t find this game nearly as good as everyone is making it out to be. What you do in the game really doesn’t change at all, you’re either going to kill or capture any bad guys you run into and thats about it. There are some gambling type mini-games, texas hold’em, black jack, liar’s dice, horse shoes… but frankly they all take too long to play in my opinion, and they’re not all that fun.

I think a lot of the scores were the result of a gut reaction to a setting that has not been over tapped yet, and sure it’s a good game, if you’re a fan of the open world sandbox model of game, you’re going to love this, everything else beyond that aspect is truly fantastic. If you can’t get into this type of game to begin with, this game isn’t going to change your mind, it suffers from the same problems other games of this ilk do. I’ll elaborate more on all this in my review when I return.

Skate 3

(well sort of..)
I don’t think it’s fair for me to review this game because to me it’s clear that I think the game is definitely much better than it actually is, but I will give it a go.

The story provided is the one of the returning “legend” as you are often referred to in the game as a result of your exploits from the previous Skate games, where, after a brief tutorial from Coach Frank (Jason Lee) you and Reda (who was your filmer from the previous games), start a brand of your own. The objective is simple, promote your brand and sell as many skateboards as possible. The milestone counter stops at a million but you can continue to accrue sales after this mark. With the exception of Lee (because I think he’s supposed to sound as campy and over the top as he does), the voice acting is terrible, but that is to be expected considering that the voices are not provided by actors, not the least of which is your new filmer… which is unfortunate because he is the one constant voice through out the game. I’m not going to put too much weight on this though since it would sound equally ridiculous if the voice acting was top notch too I think.

There are a variety of challenges to participate in, Street and Vert competitions, Own the Spot, Hall of Meat, and Death Race, Film, Photo and Pro challenges all making their return in addition to 1up, that replaces the old SKATE mode, which is a score based game over a short time, beat the opponent 3 times to win, and a new ‘Own the Lot’ challenge that basically has you performing a combination of 10 or so of the afore mentioned modes in the same vicinity. It’s a nice variety, and some of the challenges can be quite difficult. In addition, most challenges have two levels of completion, you can ‘own’ a challenge, by performing the objective, for example clearing a large gap or making a transfer, or you can ‘kill it’ by performing a specific trick while doing it, like doing a 360 grab over the same gap or transfer. This is a nice touch since you get the bulk of your boards sales by simply owning the challenge, killing them provides a minor bonus, and similarly you can get additional bonuses by doing the same challenges online. This new approach means you never have to perform a very specific trick on your first try to progress (which is ultimately why I stopped playing challenges in Skate 2).

For the way I play the game, I use the challenges as a distraction when I can’t find a good spot for a trick or the line I’m trying to complete isn’t quite working and I need a break. That statement on it’s own says a lot about why it is somewhat unfair for me to review this game… I enjoy the mechanics of the game so much, that I consider roaming around and NOT participating in the challenges that the developers provided the fun part. They’ve provided excellent in game filming tools including 4 cameras, +3 more “Advanced” variations which work with key framing (these cameras were a $10 DLC in Skate 2) so that you can make some authentic looking skate reels. In this iteration of the $10 ‘Filmer Pack’ you unlock additional storage space on the EA servers for your footage (minor gripe about that specifically here), as well as the ability to upload in HD (720p), and remove the watermark from your clips.

BlackBox has also provided the players with the Park Creator, and the object dropper as a way to customize the environments you’re in. I’ve made some use of the object dropper in my travels, but I’ve yet to create my own park (I don’t think I’m that creative). The tools are pretty intuitive though, and it seems like it wouldn’t be a huge challenge to create something playable. The object dropper is disabled while you’re in a challenge so it can’t be used to tweak the environment to give you the edge in said challenge (thats not to say that there are no objects in some of the challenges that can’t be moved to help you). That in addition to the other creative tools, the ability to import your graphics created in the online graphic creator into the game and display proudly on your character (my degenerate gamer logo below), really gives it a personal touch.

Graphic created with the Web Based Graphic Creator

From my perspective this game is the only one that really extends beyond the game, while you can access community clips and rate photos and graphics and whatever else while in game, you can also do all of this from the http://skate.ea.com website, it truly is video game integration with the web 2.0 philosophy, it really adds to the experience to me. On top of that, when your clips get views, and ratings you are rewarded with board sales that contribute to your in game progress… very neat indeed, I wonder what it would take to get a million sales via the web alone…

Much has been made of the ‘Team Focused’ approach to this game but that didn’t really effect me. As i mentioned, most of my time with the game is spent looking for spots and creating some footage, so I don’t get into the online challenges much, so perhaps the greatest addition to this franchise was lost on me. The downside of this is that it very much feels like Skate 2 in a new environment. An environment that feels over-tuned and less authentic. Your stairs usually come in sets of 3 with fairly large landings between them, theres usually always a slope before a big gap and the manny pads are always long enough for you to get your tricks set up. It makes finding interesting and unique spots a bit of a challenge for me. The environment is divided into 3 distinct districts all with their own style, the only way to get from one to the other is by using the fast travel in the menu. I found this took away from the continuity of the environment, but since I only really look at the game from the mentality of 30 second clip, moving from zone to zone wouldn’t really happen anyway.

It’s worth mentioning too that this game included EA’s ‘Online Pass’ which has been introduced as a means to deter used game sales. In the end it means if you want to participate in the Online functions of the game, you need to enter a code to do so. Obviously one code comes with the game, however if you’re like me and play on a couple profiles it means it’s going to cost you another $10 to do so… very unfortunate, or if you’re in a house hold with several people who play games your 70$ game is going to end up costing you $100 so that everyone has the same experience… I wonder if EA has a solution for that.

I guess what this all boils down too for me is that this is simply more skate 2, in a new environment, one that is good in clip sized segments but not great over all. I absolutely love the game, but I can certainly see it being less than fantastic if you aren’t simply enjoying the mechanics as I do. If you haven’t played a Skate game to this point, this is a great place to start, but I’d suggest a rental before a purchase. If you play the game like I do, you’re going to love it.

This is a repost from my previous; I figured I spent enough time making this video that it deserved a post of it’s own…

I’m playing on Normal difficulty on all these clips; for my first I think I just wanted to get something out there, the next set will probably be on hardcore for grins. The song is Milk Lizard by The Dillinger Escape Plan, and that short sample on the title treatment is from Luv (sic) by Nujabes (RIP) & Shing02

Game Credits to Black Box and EA

I unwillingly threw it up on youtube because it seems like my provider has the traffic throttled pretty low, so it was painful to watch. I was thinking about Vimeo but it seems like they wanted more money for an HD account than I pay for my hosting so that didn’t make much sense to me.