Bailing it Big Time in Skate 2

Rewind to the 90s. As a gullible 10-year-something kid, I simply wanted to play whatever was the hottest around. Tony Hawk put skate boarding games on the map with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, an arcade style skateboard game where you pull off all sorts of tricks through combinations of button presses.

Skip to 2007. Tony Hawk games which put the skateboarding genre on the map has now saturated the market with it's monopoly on skate games. And Skate comes along courtesy of EA to challenge the king of the hill, currently Tony Hawk's Proving Ground.

In short, Skate was like a second coming for skateboarding games. It wasn't a humongous success, but that could be attributed to how Tony Hawk's yearly releases turned people off on the idea of another skateboarding game.

Enter Skate 2. An improvement of an already good game. People generally know Skate because of it's leaning towards realistic tricks by flicking the right stick for tricks like ollies and kickflips (and the learning curve associated with it).

Skate 2 throws everything and the bathwater to immerse you in the underground world of skateboarding. Not only will you have your rudimentary trick contests for points, but you'll also find downhill races, games of S.K.A.T.E. (HORSE but for skateboarding) and my personal favorites, editing replay videos and bailing on your tricks big time.


The replay editor is rather meaty in terms of getting what you want out of an awesome line or combo. You have follow cam, tripod, actual game cam, and even camera speeds. Things can get pretty cinematic, not to mention the film editor DLC available that'll expand on your tools.

And purposely bailing on your tricks? It's hilarious. The rag doll physics never cease to make me go "Ahhh!" when my poor little avatar flips, crashes, or otherwise maims himself on the pavement (my personal fav is the high speed fall with your face simply rubbing off on the cement).

Make no mistake. Skate 2 has a difficult learning curve. The slightest deviation in your stick flicks can make you do an entirely different trick then you intended. But the fun is in pulling off even the simplest trick and having that satisfaction eternally immortalized on video. A triple kickflip on Tony Hawk is just a simple button press. Here, a triple kickflip not only needs the right speed and height, but the correct flicking and the right timing to pull the board back in before you eat the floor.