Tony Hawk dominated the skateboarding genre for years with Pro Skater. A few games of the same genre where made but failed... Then came Proving Ground, practically the same as THUG (Tony Hawks underground) except with a bit more polish. Also came skate! a new fresh skateboarding experience with lots of hype! But does it live up to it?

Skate's story is amazingly simple, at the real life cut scene at the begging you watch from your cameraman's camera as your character jumps of a rail and into the path of a bus! "Oh my god!" You here your cameraman say as the screen blacks out. Then another cut scene featuring you getting plastic surgery! EEK! Then it's back onto the streets. Basically you have to get famous again, entering competitions, doing photo shoots and filming yourself are about as much as you get in terms of missions, there's no real story here so if you enjoyed that part of THUG and Proving Ground, this might not be the game for you... Also there are only a few times when you'll see your skater's face during a cut scene, well, the fact is the only cut scenes you'll see are skaters' sponsor vids and ones of shop keepers talking to you...

Unlike Tony Hawks you can't get off your board which is a real shame considering one "SPOT" is a giant drop which you have to ollie onto from the side instead of dropping in off the top. Spots are well, spots, they usually consist of a rail or ramp or ledge or something to trick on or off, they're scattered around San Vanelona with a set score which you must conquer, you can then upload a video of you doing it (or doing anything for that matter) or upload your score to the internet. The Video editor is great allowing you to film yourself pulling off a trick or grinding a ledge or whatever (hitting grannies is a popular one on the website) then edit speed, camera angle and effects, unfortunately there's no option to set up a tri-pod, however the sequel Skate 2 promises this capability. There are many spots where your not allowed to go, but that won't stop you since you can usually rack up more points there, some missions consist of you being in one, but be warned catch a security guards attention and he'll chase you around until he catches you or you leave, the consequences can be brutal, £50 may not seem like much when you finish the game as a millionaire but it can be deadly if you've just started. Online play is here but with huge lag and nobody good it's not used much.

Skate is different to any other skateboarding game ever mainly because of the gameplay: instead of the Tony Hawk controls which used the face buttons, Skate takes a gamble and introduces the flick it system and guess what, it works! hold down the right analogue stick then flick it up to do an ollie! flick it up in different directions to straight up to pull off different tricks, say you held it down then curved it round the bottom, you'd do a shuv-it! The trick list is huge, grab tricks are one by holding down the R2 or L2 buttons to grab right or left sides of your board and in mid air you can move the right analogue stick in any direction to 'tweak' the trick which basically means moving it around, you push the stick forward to pull off a melon, or just invent something completely new and hope you get points for it. there are loads of mega ramps to help out with this, you also get a multiplier similar to the one in guitar hero except it goes down if you stop tricking out and goes up for every GREAT trick you do. The face buttons are now for pushing and lifting the board from your feet to do christ airs. the d-pad is used for hand movements, press up for your character to cheer say. Also instead of tapping triangle to grind you just ollie onto them, and tweak your board in mid air so if i did an ollie then pushed the rigt analogue stick to the right it would move the board into a side shape so when i hit the rail the wheels would be at either side of it, not so complicated when you see it. also nollies are the same as ollies except you push ther right stick up then flick it down to do a nollie and nollie tricks.

Skate's presentation is good, but not great, the character models and graphics are good but the frame rate struggles a little when you get hit by a speeding car say. Other than that it's quite nice even if it never rains and is always a nice sunny day! the customisable clothes and person options are great too!

Overall Skate can be fun but if you love story and buttery smooth frame rate, this may not be for you, but then again, i love stories in games like Tony Hawks but the gameplay is so good in Skate I now want to take a dump on THUG! In other words skate is great: Unique and fun, that's what you need in a game!

Story: 7
Design: 8
Gameplay: 10
Presentation: 8
Overall: 8

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