Skate 3 brings a whole new online dimension to the franchise whilst keeping the game fresh with a whole new city and challenges to do, plus a number of other innovations to meet your skating needs.
The aim of the game is to sell 1 million boards, which can be achieved through completing challenges - which now have two levels; Own it, where you must complete the challenge given and Kill it, where you must perform more specific tricks within a challenge. For example, there is a photoshoot that requires you to gap between two ledges with any trick, but to kill it you must do a fakie 180 between them. Killing gets slightly more boards sold, but can be a little too difficult (frustrating) at times.
You get to build a team throughout the game as you complete board sale milestones, allowing up to 4 teammates which you can customize and use for team-specific challenges. This is where the online play comes into place, although... I don't have Xbox live, so I just use the AI controlled teammates, which can be a bit useless at times.
Overall, I found this game brilliant. It outdoes Skate 1 and 2, and for online gamers it can be a lot of fun (apparently).

Fans of the Skate franchise, real-life skaters who enjoy gaming, people who are fed up with the downward spiral of the arcadey Tony Hawk's games and anyone who loves a challenge. If you haven't played Skate 1 or 2, learning the controls will definately be hard work - as it was for anyone who tuned in earlier in the series.

The city is a massive improvement from the dirty looking streets of Skate 2. I really didn't like the city in Skate 2 - especially the Hawk-esque Nautical Centre and as said - the grimy look to all the streets and surfaces. The all-new city of Port Carverton is bright and colourful, with loads of places to explore, some gigantic handrails and ridiculous heights to bail from. As usual, pretty much everything is flawlessly designed to be tricked on, or off.
The Hall of Meat controls are slightly tweaked now too, with spread eagles allowing you to glide, with a small aiming reticule to indicate where you will splat.
Also, with the RT/R2 button you can 'push off' from the ground once you've bailed making your guy spring back up spasmically as many times as you can manage - racking up loads of HoM points. This makes for a lot of laughs and helps for some challenges.
Other things:
-You can now create a skate park, which is fun and easy(ish) to use. You can upload your park to XboxLive and sell more boards from it.
-You can now darkslide, dark-catch and Underflip.
-There is three difficulty settings that can be changed whenever you want - Easy, Normal and Hardcore.
-The irritating S.K.A.T.E challenges have been given the boot for the more fun 1UP challenge, in which you have to get more points than the other skater within 20 second timer.
-You can now edit photos from a photoshoot challenge which is handy and lets you get creative. You can zoom, move the camera angle, change saturation and contrast to make it black & white and change the background focus.
-Security guards and skate-stoppers have been done away with, letting you skate freely without hassle.
-You can smack pedestrians with your board.
-The Hall of Meat challenges are hilarious.
-The soundtrack is great, bar a couple of tunes.
-You can unlock a slab of meat called 'meat man' as a playable character.

Some of the challenges are either too easy or ridiculously tricky. One challenge I had to jump off a ledge, ollie a small set of stairs, then grind a rail with no time limit (very easy). Another, I had to try and handplant a roof thing that wasn't lined up with the vert ramp, which you can only do purely by luck. Sometimes you feel more relieved than rewarded for completing a challenge.
Pedestrians are still amazingly good at getting in your way at crucial moments, as are other skaters - who sometimes do challenges with you at the same time, getting right in your way before a jump... Very annoying. (although you can punch them away with RB/R1)
Some Kill it missions will seem completely undoable, due to trick-specific goals that require extremely fiddly precise control manipulation. (especially with advanced grabs such as the Airwalk.)
There is a LOT of product placement and brand name flaunting.
The park editor is a wee bit pointless because of the perfect city you can skate, but it's more of an online thing anyway...
People without a Live account might feel a bit left out here and there.

Keep playing! There are loads of challenges left over when the main part of the game ends, and there are plenty of things to be unlocked by completing these challenges - so I'm going through them one by one.
When that's all over though, I guess I'll just skate around until skate 4 rolls along.

Relieved. I was hoping it wouldn't be rubbish, and I wasn't disappointed. When I started to skate around Port Carverton I got a sense that they've really put some effort into this city, unlike Skate 2's. It's basically more of the same, but ...better.

EA Games. Black Box.

It's a whole lot of fun to play, whether you're teaming up online, freefalling off a cliff, flying off megaramps or just customizing your crew.
There's lots more to do and see, and if you already enjoy the Skate games, you shouldn't miss this.

You might absolutely hate the control system, which mainly revolves around the analogue sticks. You use the right stick to do ollies and flips, the left stick to turn and spin, the shoulder buttons to grab and A,X/X,Square to push. At first this can be a bit much, but trust me, it becomes so great once you master it.
Plus, maybe you just won't like where the series is going or not be interested in skateboarding.

The intro movie is a lot better than the last two.
Shingo is now your cameraman, and is much less annoying than Reda.
You can do Hall of Meat poses (judo, etc.) whilst hippy jumping.
There's a cheat that lets you play as Isaac from Dead Space.
There are new bailing animations where your guy will nearly fall, but correct himself.
Offboard action has improved.
Loads of new gear to check out.
Loads of new hand gestures.
buy it buy it buy it

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of Skate 3   from Amazon.Com!

Created Jun 02, 2010 at 8:29am • Submit your own review...