skate sucks.

Get the REDMAGIC 11 Pro today and enjoy gaming on the worlds fastest phone, with liquid cooling technology! https://bit.ly/42wnVgO Get 20% when buying G Fuel: https://www.gfuel.com/THATBOYAQUA Edited by VFXShaun Shauns Twitter: https://x.com/VFXShaun Shauns Portfolio: https://vfxshaun.com/ Shauns YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/c/PlaystayShaun Skate 4, or, as EA calls it, Skate, is out in early access, and I’m sure you’ve seen the same opinion pieces I have about it’s art style, it’s gameplay, and now that it’s available to everyone, I want to throw my hat into the ring as well. To give a brief history of my time with the franchise, I have always been into skateboarding and loved the Skate games growing up. In fact, the way I learned to do an ollie in real life was by playing a slow motion clip of my character in Skate 3 doing an ollie, and trying to copy the footmovements. For many years the games were part of a daily routine. I'd come home from school, grind out some rails for half an hour, and move on. These days I replay the franchise once per year, and so I could not be more excited for a new skate game. When it came to this game however, my hopes were quickly dashed once I saw that this was one, a reboot, two live service, and 3, was made by modern EA. You gotta remember, 2025 EA is not the same as 2008 EA, and while the allure of overpriced DLCs and microtransactions seeped its way into Skate 3, it was nothing compared to what would eventually come for a lot of EA’s heavy hitters. But let’s get something straight when it comes to Skate, out of the gate; I don’t think live service is necessarily a bad idea, so long as it is done right. We’ll get into how it’s currently not being done right, but for now, let’s think of what skating is culturally, and how that needs to translate to a video game. The most important part of skateboarding is expression. You express yourself in the way you move, the tricks you do, and when it comes to the game, you express yourself even further because said expression is not limited to your physical capabilities. I believe this is why fashion is such a pillar within skater culture, because it’s another part of that expression. But what is expression if you have no one to express to? That is why the online elements of the first 2 skate games were so well received. You could create an entire identity represented by your clothing and skating style, and then interact with someone else, sometimes in friendly competition, and sometimes just for the comradery. With Skate 3, this was heightened tenfold with the introduction of custom parks, to the point where the community is still strong to this day. With that in mind, a skating game where you are always playing with other players sounds like a dream come true. No longer are you limited by a linear single player story, no longer are you having to worry about lobby size, this is basically a skating MMO. But Full Circle, the development team here, are not the same people that made those first 3 games, so whose to say they won’t be able to capture that lightning in a bottle? Fortunately, they did, and it all starts with the game-feel. Game-feel is difficult to describe but it can easily be measured by how well a game feels to play, often a combination of the core mechanics and the animations. In the earliest builds of Skate 4, where there were no textures, no music, minimal sound effects, there was promise, because the game FELT good. The animations have weight, the sounds are crisp, and the little details are there. When getting off your board at high speeds, the momentum of the wheels will keep them spinning for a time, and while the game does have a smoother artstyle now, it wasn’t exactly what we were promised. When we got the first trailer for Skate, it looked like this, and so I was disappointed to see this art style. Now, I have to make a distinction when it comes to the look, because the art style itself isn’t bad, but it’s just not right. Skate to me has always been a grungy game with a humorous undertone. Skate 3 my favourite ditched a lot of this style, and I personally think it was for the worse, however, there was still a defined texture to much of the world. Skate. where do I even begin? the new skate game, otherwise known as skate 4 has enough glitches to make the IGN skate 4 review make sense. I mean, outside of this not being a skate 4 critique and more of a skate 4 impressions this game is a far cry from the skate 4 leak of a few years ago/ Despite this, the skate review and skate impressions i have seen from the the new skate game call it skate fortnite or say skate is bad, skate is awful, skate is great, whatever other descriptor, and I think it's a bit lame. Yea, I know a live service skate game isn't what we wanted and without a few more skate updates it won't be close to finished, but I feel like we don't have to be so silly about it.