Skate It Review (Wii)

By Joe Haygood | November 22, 2008

Electronic Arts really hit one out of the park last fall with the surprise hit, Skate.  The new control scheme, view and trick controls, added a lot of new style to a genre that had been played out.  Only problem is that players on the Wii were left out of all the fun.  Electronic Arts has dropped Skate It for Wii owners, a new skating game that bridges the plot lines between the two Skate games.  The only problem is that Skate It seems to have left out all the things that made last year’s game so much fun.

Skate It takes place in San Vanelona, immediately after a massive earthquake hits the city, leveling it to rubble, and of course, new areas to show off your skating prowess.  As you move along in the single player campaign, you will open up new areas around the world, a first for the Skate series.

When you first start off into the world of Skate It, you are asked to pick a control scheme.  You have the choice of the Wiimote, Wiimote and nunchuck, and finally, the Wiimote and Wii Balance Board.  Unfortunately, none of these controls schemes will benefit you in the actual control of Skate It.  See while you have all of these options at your disposal, none of them seem to give the player any definite control over what happens on the screen.

My first experience was with the Balance Board, which only lasted through the first twenty minutes of my first play session was a complete disaster.  The game never gets a good sense of centering the board, and while tricks were easy enough to pull off, trying to go straight was a challenge and a half.  Also, lifting too far off the board brings up the calibration screen, which is jarring when it happens in the middle of a long trick stream.  Wiimote and nunchuck fared better, but there were still control issues, especially with getting the game to recognize a grab.  I would perform a grab time and time again, but never got the result Skate It was looking for, because each time I performed a similar motion, I would end up with a totally different trick.

Graphically, Skate It looks like someone took the original skate, and then beat it with a pixilation stick.  While not horrible to look at, there were far too many seams showing through the game world, and everything just looked like it came from a 16 color palette.  It may have been planned this way, as the world you are in has been completely leveled to the ground, so a rough texturing may be what the designers were going for, but it seems like it could have done the system a lot more justice, by cleaning up the graphics.  There are a lot of options for the look of your character, including a complete clothing and skate shop, to help with getting that just right appearance for the camera.

Another issue is how empty the world feels.  You never really run into any other skater taking advantage of the world.  All of this destruction and perfectly laid down skate parks occur and you are the only one in this skating mecca that decides to get in on the action?  It just seems a bit strange to not see another skater in your travels.

The original announcer from Skate is back and is dispensing his own form of hints and tips to keep you upright and skating, but he starts to grate on your nerves after awhile.  I guess after enough failures due to control issues, you start to hear a lot of phrases over and over.  The background music is surprisingly good, although I did not recognize most of the artists.  But it was always playing in the background and had a great vibe for the game.

It is unfortunate that a lot of design and control flaws take down Skate It from a must have Wii title.  There is a surprisingly long and challenging single player mode, that gives the player tons of things to do in the world.  But when you cannot control any of that action in a stable manner, Skate It ends up eating concrete after a bad grind.  Skate It gets 2 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.