Black Box’s co-op skating title, Skate 3, is almost here and the good folks at EA Canada invited Co-Optimus out to their Vancouver office earlier this week to check out the game a week before it’s released. Jim and Nick have previously provided impressions of the game from similar events, so what’s different this time around? Well, with the final build of the game in front of us, we were given the freedom to run around, explore, and try out everything on which we could get our hands – from the Skate.park creation tool to the co-op challenges.
When we talk about co-op on this site, we do so from a very specific definition, though we have previously discussed some other forms of co-op, like the idea of social co-op. Skate 3 presents a rather interesting conundrum, as it certainly tends to lend itself more towards the social side of co-op, but it does contain elements that fall within our definition. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. First and foremost, how does the game control?
After the Skate 3 Community Event back in November that Jim and I attended, I was pretty excited to play more. When I got home, the first thing I did was fire up the Xbox and started playing Skate 2. I was, to say the least, a little disappointed by the controls. It’s not that the control layout had changed, but they were definitely not as responsive or good as they are in Skate 3. The folks that I spoke with from EA Canada that had played both games extensively agreed, and added that they had definitely worked on refining the controls to make them a little better this time around.
Additionally, the difficulties in Skate 3 have been tweaked some in direct response to the feedback they’ve received from their community, and now players may choose from three difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, and Hardcore. The major difference between each of these levels is how much leniency the game gives the player in terms of the tricks he or she tries to pull off, and how precise players have to be when landing a wicked jump or executing a grind. Hardcore is particularly unforgiving when it comes to executing grind maneuvers. If you don’t have your board position just right when you hit that rail, be prepared to eat pavement.
While there are specific team challenges in the game, many of the other challenges can be done with cooperatively as well
One of the biggest new features in Skate 3 is the ability for a player to create his or her own skate park. In an open-world where players are encouraged to skate or grind on just about everything in sight, the Skate.park creation tool expands upon this freedom by allowing a player to design a place that has the exact set-up of rails, jumps, and half-pipes he or she wants. There are plenty of different ramps, rails, and other skateable items to place around your park, as well as objects, ranging from traffic cones to bottles of Miracle Whip, that you can add to provide some obstacles or challenges to the park. One of the game’s producers also hinted that players may get even more items and objects to place in their parks via future downloadable content.
In order to complete this photo challenge, you and your skating buddy have to perform the specificed maneuver
After you’re done creating the park you want, you can upload it to EA’s servers where it will be made available to other players to download. The more folks download your park, the more board sales you’ll receive in the campaign mode. It is possible through a combination of park downloads and board graphic downloads, which are created on the Skate 3 website, for a player to reach their campaign goal of 1,000,000 board sales without ever touching the campaign mode. These sales are only reflected in the creator’s game, however, which ties in to the interesting co-op conundrum that Skate 3 presents.
Skate 3 is a game that encourages players to “team up and throw down” in a variety of ways. Inviting friends to your game to complete film, photo, and a couple other challenge-types will add an “on-line bonus” to the number of boards sold when you complete that challenge, thereby allowing you and your friends to reach the board sale goal faster. Additionally, there are a couple of specific team-based challenges, like Own the Lot and Deathrace (which are also multiplayer modes), in which you can compete with your friends against computer opponents.
Some friends may get a bit too creative with the skater creator
In spite of this, skating is, at its core, a solo activity. Having your friends along when tackling any of the challenges makes it more fun, and can some times make it a bit easier as they can move objects around in order to ensure you clear them or land a jump, but they can’t hop on the same board with you to make you a better skater or complete a challenge for you. When you tackle a photo or film challenge, all players engaged in the challenge have to complete it on their own, which can make it a bit more frustrating if one player isn’t quite as adept at handling his board as his friends. The most your friends can do in a situation like that is show you how to pull something off, or offer some tips that might make the challenge a bit easier. Additionally, as previously mentioned, board graphic and skate park downloads are only credited towards the creator, other members of your team, if you’re on one, won’t see any of the benefits of those downloads.
While Skate 3 may not provide the kind of co-op experience we’ve come to expect, there is still a kind of shared experience when playing Skate 3 that’s unlike any other game I’ve played. Getting together on-line with your friends becomes less about completing certain goals or objectives as group, and more about seeing what kinds of crazy, inventive, or just downright silly things you can do; and really, that’s what the game’s developers are going for with Skate 3. I’ve heard countless times from them that their biggest goal for Skate 3 was to enable their community to easily do all of the things they were already doing in Skate 2, like forming, skating, and competing as teams. Based on what I’ve played, I’d say they’ve been quite successful at not only meeting that objective, but also making the entire offline/on-line experience a rather seamless one for you and your friends.