Tricks and Tools (cont.)

The new Skate.School tool allows rookies, veterans and anywhere in between to learn all about the numerous ways to execute tricks. It offers a place for practice in order to sharpen your skills before you tackle the takeover of Port Carverton. Skate.Feed is a social network that allows you to keep track of the activities of your team mates and rival crews. Skate.Create includes a number of different tools that give the game a fresh and enjoyable activity outside of just skating. This includes the return of Skate.Reel, which allows you to capture videos of your character and team in their entire wheel burning glory. Skate.Graphics also returns and gives you the ability to design your own custom logo for your team. All members of your crew will wear your symbol, which will also be plastered all over your products, e.g. personal skateboards. The all-new Skate.Park allows you to create the most adventurous dream playground that you can think of, which can be shared with others online. Hall of Meat has also returned with improvements. Players can deliberately injure their skater and team in brutal bloody bone crunching ways.

New Playground

Port Carverton offers several different areas to show off your skills and battle other crews. One main area is Downtown. In Skate 2 cars ruled: they served as obstructions and a way to divide areas. In Skate 3 pedestrians are the dominant hindrances. As you roll and skid around shopping areas and plazas you’ll be constantly put to the test, dodging and swerving your way through crowds. There are countless plazas and more connectivity between them, meaning more skate lines and skate spots than previous games in the series. One plaza in particular, Crystal Plaza, is a favourite of the designers. Its textures and materials of concrete, glass and metal create a visually pleasing area. There’s lots of open space in the middle for DMOs as well as upper tier levels that lead onto the plaza. These will make for some really interesting skate lines leading into it from dynamic positions.

Another new area is the Industrial District. In previous Skate games there were small industrial areas that became popular for filming videos. Based on this tendency the development team decided to create an entire area for Skate 3. The industrial area includes height, distance, unusual shapes and different levels, all aspects that allow the player more diversity in their gameplay. The Quarry is the most visually pleasing and exciting section. Its design is beautiful and each rock is hand crafted. It’s believed that it will be a popular place online. The spillway is huge and very interesting. As you roll down the grimy unused areas, pockets of light shine through from above, leading the lighting to really grab your attention in this dark and dingy place.

Get Your Boards Ready

Overall, Skate 3 has improved on its already loved system that was set up by its predecessors. With a fun, catchy and engaging soundtrack, banter between teams and support from members that work as a unit, you will feel the comradeship of a real skate crew. The inclusion of a wide variety of different tools to play around with will give players plenty of customisable content. Skate 3 looks to be shaping up as continuation and improvement on an already established franchise that allows skaters to pump, grind and tranny till their boards snap and wheels burn off.