rareexample

Reason why I stress unbiased unpaid is most of the game review sites are either drunk as fuck, off the rocker, paid by the game corporation or just plain ain’t an actual gamer. I play games because I love them, played them since my first game of pong, old school with the actual paddles.

I feel compelled to give an honest review here because I’m quite disappointed with the game. I’ve always been a huge fan of Skating games, played and owned them all. Skate 1, best skateboarding game by far. Skate 2, while having much potential, not so much.

Keep in mind that I am playing the PS3 version, so things may be different in the 360 world, which I haven’t tried yet but just may to see if it’s the same mess.

GRAPHICS AND PERFORMANCE

One big downfall is the graphics and performance of this game. I’ve tried setting the game to 720 and 1080 and both resolutions are equally shit. It actually feels like the graphics are from a first gen PS1 console… They’re that bad, pixelated, blurry and drab. The game often stutters and has problems when you start skating fast, or bail. It’s like the PS3 just can’t handle it, which is confusing because the resolution seems so reduced.

ONLINE

Things don’t get better here, if the game can’t perform well offline, add network latency to the mix and you have yourself a powerpoint slideshow. You can barely get a grind off because the game stutters so much, it’s quite sad actually. Especially when you try to do any kind of challenge as a group, you simply can’t because everyone is lagging.

SOUND

The only real positive I found in the game was the music. I loved the tunes but unfortunately you have that stupid douche bag following you around again. This guy says the stupidest fuckin shit you’ll ever hear and if I had a friend who spoke as often and inanely retarded as this guy, he would get many punches to the face. Unfortunately you can’t mute him because he’s a core part of the game. Big downfall.

FUN

I loved skate1 and was hoping for the same fun with this considering it’s cool new features like, moving crap around and getting off your board. Unfortunately because the game “chugs” so much, it’s hard to enjoy, the fact the textures look like shit doesn’t help either. I’m a sucker for games with good graphics. When you get off your skate board, it more frustrating because you feel like a gimp fucktard and the camera angle gets all clunky and trying to turn or look around is less then ideal. The whole point is to reach new places but you can’t even climb anything. Again, quite sad and disappointing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Do I recommend this? Probably not as of today, unless a patch comes out to fix this shit, I see it sitting on my shelf along side Sean White snowboarding which was equally crappy. With EA laying off the black box team who created the game, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. I had my hopes up because of the videos, reviews and screenshots from other sites looked quite promising but this is ultimately a let down and misleading cause it’s not the same game I played.

When I look at other screenshots, it’s as though they were provided by EA, hence the EA logo and have some fish eye, photoshop retouched goodness applied to them.

SCREENCAPS

http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/sports/skate2workingtitle/review.html?tag=topslot;title;2

http://www.gamershell.com/ps3/skate_2/screenshots.html?id=372404

Checkout a shot taken from my screen, quite a difference… Even the game text is blurry. Notice the poor texture on the garbage bin especially the phone booth,  and the pixelation on my character… Sad.

UPDATE! – Just tried the XBOX360 VERSION and it is much smoother, but again equally dull textures.

UPDATE! – A patch was recently released, easing up on the framerate drag making the game enjoyable but the game is still underperforming in half pipes and pools. When you open the menu, it’s almost like the game secretly tricks your TV to think you’re looking at 1080, but when you open the PS menu, you can see the fonts are all jagged like the PS is actually in 720 or lower.