Hands On With Skate It
I have to admit I have tired of skate boarding games. Tony hawk has run it's course and while EA's SKATE was a fine game in it's genre that genre, it still didn't have enough to renew my interest. So it was with much trepidation and doubt that I checked out Skate It, the new SKATE game for the DS and Wii. I have to hand it to them for trying, but ultimately, both games seemed very shoehorned into their respective consoles.
The Wii version is of course controlled with the Wii remote. Different tricks and combos can be accomplished by little flicks of the remote with varying shapes to describe the moves. The issue here is that there are so many moves, several with similar shaped movements that the Wii seemed to have trouble telling some of them apart. I would find myself trying to pull off one move and having my character perform a different one. This could make things very difficult for long term players. One surprise that they brought out towards the end of presentation was the Wii balance board. They had only had the thing for a week or so and were trying to start making it work with the game. They showed off a couple of the moves that seemed to work pretty well but we'll have to wait and see once they have had a little more time to work with it. Using the balance board is one thing that could really bump this game up beyond the ordinary and really make it worth playing.
Much like the Wii version, the controls for the DS seemed kind of wedged in. Each trick and movement is done with the stylus by either tapping or drawing shapes. I think the game would have been much better served by just making a straight port to the DS and utilizing the button controls.
From what I saw, SKATE IT for Wii and Ds are not titles I will be running out to play. Anyone who has played SKATE for the 360 will likely be disappointed by the graphics for both of these systems, particularly the Wii. The DS version can be forgiven a bit given its handheld status, but the controls seemed a bit wonky with all the tracing of shapes. Obviously you should judge for yourself when the game actually launches and the rough edges are smoothed out, but my recommendation is to give it a rental before deciding to buy.
Make the jump to check out a trailer for the DS version.
Fruit Brute
Posted to Video Games, Videos on 20 May 2008
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