As proved by the mistakes made in my Mercenaries 2 review you should never review a game you haven't finished. For this reason I won't be posting a review of Skate 2 at any point; I simply don't care for it enough to complete the damn thing. That said I still care enough to post a little, about points in the game which have annoyed me considerably. Some of them might be down to me not grasping key concepts with the game, in which case the time should have been taken to explain the bloody things to me before I got all worked up about them.
Challenge: Complete a downhill course of sorts, racking up a bigger score than my rival. Reach the bottom in order for score to count.
Problem: I'm bailing every time I try and go down a ramp, with no explanation as to why.
I finally get a high enough score but get stuck in a bowl. Try getting off my board but it turns out the jump button is fucking useless and won't let you climb out. It seems the jump button is only useful for scaling rises in terrain you could easily ollie.
Challenge: Grind a high ledge. There's a slanted picnic table set up to help achieve this.
Problem: I move the table to make it easier. Hit the corner of the table, bail, have to reposition. Every time you bail you have to press 3 buttons and then wait for a countdown timer before you can retry.
I make it into the ledge, reached the end and dropped to the floor. Bail, restart.
I get too close to the wall next to the ledge so my skater rotates to ride the fucking wall, when he was in the perfect position to grind the ledge had he not moved.
Challenge: Hit a large ramp at the bottom of a hill. The majority of said hill is a road.
Problem: There's a T-junction at the point where the hill stops being road and turns into skate ramp. Cars keep on coming from the right, but by the time I see them it's too late. If I slow down then I won't have enough speed for the jump, but if I keep going I'm going to collide with something. Bail, restart.
Challenge: Land a grind and a slide down the same ledge.
Problem: Actually no problem with the actual challenge here, but when I completed it I got the message “Very Awesomeness.” I was not impressed.
All of this on after a couple days of play. Expect additions to this list.
Additions:
Challenge: Follow some pro skater around a 'spot.'
Problem: Never choose to do a challenge with a pro skater you actually like; the amount of times he's come up behind me and knocking me off my board is insane. Couldn't they build in some system to prevent this?
Man I fucking such at Skate.
Problem: DragonForce are on the soundtrack. Whenever their song comes on I restart the challenge to make it go away. Even if it means losing all my progress it's better than listening to that shit.
Challenge: Follow a pro skater. A lengthy part of this section is down a hill.
Problem: Traveling down the hill I need to coffin to make it under a barrier but the camera can't decide which side of the skater it wants to go. I bail endlessly before finally getting through on a tenth or so attempt.
Oh no. I need to get off the board to walk up some steps into a house to complete the challenge. The timer's ticking down but I can't make him walk round the damn corner. Fail, restart.
Side thought: There should be away to do a quick 180 spin instead up a painfully slow turn. Checking the trick list... Nope, nothing.
Challenge: Nose and tailslide across a couple of ledges in a pond.
Problem: First off nowhere in the game does it tell me how to do a noseSLIDE, so I'm going in the hope that a noseBLUNT is the same thing.
Second off there's another skater doing the tricks simultaneously to me; every time I go he gets in my way and I bail into the pond. Restart.
Closing thoughts:
I hate the way I feel like I'm not in control, but a slave to the physics system. I hate the way my skater can never decide whether he wants to manual or not, and I hate the way I can never make instantaneous decisions without fucking up my line and failing the challenge. I hate the way the smallest obstacles stop you dead in your tracks and I hate the way there's no way of climbing anything higher than your waist. I hate the way the way I'm always fighting the camera as it moves around and I hate the way you can only jump forward mere millimeters. I hate everything about this fucking game. I hate Skate 2.
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