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Natural disasters have turned San Verona, Skate's concrete paradise, into wreckage. The populace has been evacuated. So what's a skater to do? Answer: Carve a pinewood path through the scattered remains of all our favourite Skate spots, drops and jumps in EA's Wii and DS spin-off, Skate It.
Skate's best feature - the Flick It trick system - clearly won't transfer directly to Wii or DS. So developer Black Box has had to think of other ways to innovate. Returning to Tony Hawk's style button taps is simply not an option. So on DS we have stylus control over our tricks and jumps, while on Wii you simply take the Wiimote and, well, flick it.
Our hands on began with Wii. Effectively, the Wiimote is your board. We weren't entirely convinced, but once we'd had more than a few minutes with the controls they felt as natural as using an analogue stick. Skate It will work with the balance board (for turning, powerslides and manuals) but Black Box are still deciding how exactly to use it, and wouldn't let us play. Not that there wasn't enough to keep us occupied with the motion controls.
Here's how it works: If you want to ollie, you lift the Wiimote - keeping it level - and to nollie, you dip it. To kickflip or heelflip, you slightly twist the controller as you lift it up, while performing pop-shuvits see you carving a semi circle as if drawning on a blackboard with chalk, or a full circle for a 360 shuv. It might not sound natural, but you soon get into the swing of it.
All the tricks from last year's Skate are included (from Salad grinds to 360 Flips) so there's going to be a hell of a lot of gestures to learn. It'll be crucial, then, that we get the same 'Now I get it!' moments that we did with Skate on Xbox 360 and PS3. A good sign then that, while the controls aren't instantly comfortable, it didn't take us too long to start tricking in and out of long, smooth grinds or leaping neatly over obstacles while pulling grabs with the B button.
Grinding is where the Wiimote control works best. Once airborne, your board mirrors the position of the Wiimote, making it a simple but satisfying task to shape up that perfect grind. It's great to see the Wii version providing the same sort of joy in small triumphs that we loved in the original Skate - our hosts were particularly impressed with our seriously tweaked nose and tail slides, which came naturally once we'd got used to the flow of our approach toward a line of benches.
Getting your skater lined up and navigating the environments is certainly the hardest part. While rolling, twisting the controller leans on your board to steer, just like in real life. Pushing, thankfully, is triggered by a button press - the last thing we need is more motion control.
It's tricky to get the hang of how much twist you need to make a turn, though. Like Mario Kart, the biggest problem is how well the sensitivity works - you expect to have to make big, heavy gestures, which result in jerky and inaccurate movement. When, in actual fact, moving the controller just slightly is a far more effective at guiding your board around the level.
Mastering vert skating will be the biggest challenge, we reckon, since this is where all the elements of the game come together at high speed. It all works great, though. So great, in fact, that the DS version was a bit of a disappointment once we got started with the stylus.
Don't get us wrong, it's an impressive enough achievement for Black Box to get a 3D version of Skate running on DS hardware. And running pretty well, too - it's all recognisably Skate-style, with the same colour palette and environmental design. The controls, however, leave a lot to be desired after Wii's nifty flicks.
Using the stylus, you draw the trick you want over an image of a skateboard. For a flip, say, you draw a line from the tail to the far right or left of the nose, for a nollie pop shuv you draw a semi circle out from the nose to the tail. Again, it's a simple system in theory that's difficult to get used to in practice. But, unlike Wii, the DS controls never felt much fun to us.
Steering with the D-pad is a bit awkward, and pushing is really hit or miss - you're supposed to draw a straight line in the space alongside the board from front to back to trigger a push, but sometimes you'll trigger an accidental trick, and sometimes the push will be little more than a gentle foot tap. It's frustrating, and never started to feel natural. Performing the right trick at the right time was too fiddly to be satisfying - and meant we couldn't concentrate on setting up a run or steering around the environment.
That said, both versions still have plenty of time to be perfected. Black Box won't launch until the games are done - which you can expect will be later this year - and this is a developer that has a knack for creating intuitive and intelligent control systems. Expect both the DS and Wii versions of Skate It to match the high enjoyment factor of the next-gen original Skate.
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for a list of online wii games, click: http://www.wiichat.com/nintendo-wii-...ine-games.html FOR MOHH2 PLAYERS: SORRY I BROKE MY HEADSET SO CANT USE SKYPE BUT THAT DOESNT MEAN WE CANT PLAY RIGHT? MOHH2 persona: Bwynd1 Games owned: Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, MOHH2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Endless Ocean, Wii Sports, Cooking Mama: Cook Off.
hmm, now that it's been shown this game isn't just a gimmick for the balance board, i'm getting interested (again).
i'm a long-time fan of the tony hawk series, so i'm pretty intrigued by a game that claims to be more in-depth than the THPS series.
oh come on? tony hawk has never been about in depth. it was all about surreal experience of skateboarding
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for a list of online wii games, click: http://www.wiichat.com/nintendo-wii-...ine-games.html FOR MOHH2 PLAYERS: SORRY I BROKE MY HEADSET SO CANT USE SKYPE BUT THAT DOESNT MEAN WE CANT PLAY RIGHT? MOHH2 persona: Bwynd1 Games owned: Super Smash Brothers Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, MOHH2, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Endless Ocean, Wii Sports, Cooking Mama: Cook Off.
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