EA’s official Skate FAQ may be very clear about what 2025’s new early entry iteration represents for the collection as a complete. “This isn’t a sequel, remake, or a remaster,” states the temporary clarification. “It’s the evolution of the Skate franchise.” The primary half I wholeheartedly agree with. This isn’t Skate 4, and it definitely isn’t a remake of the originals by any stretch of the creativeness. The second half shouldn’t be completely unfaithful both: It is an evolution, of types. That’s, it’s definitely modified. Rather a lot. Sadly, this implies this new model of Skate bears little semblance to the late-2000s originals I like – and I’m presently discovering it inconceivable to heat to its sanitised, homogenised, and monetised reinvention. Sure, Skate has advanced dramatically, but it surely’s completed so to mix into its free-to-play, service game-dominated environment – like moths within the sooty cities of the British Industrial Revolution. I don’t suppose I’ve ever in contrast a sport to an insect earlier than, however maybe it is sensible after I discover it this repellant.
Earlier than I get too deep into why it’s offputting, there are a few true strengths that I can establish in Skate’s early entry launch – the primary of that are the sound results. In terms of capturing the nuanced array of skateboarding sounds – the hiss of spinning wheels, the friction of plywood on diversified surfaces, and the clink of steel on steel – the workforce has completed a terrific job. Ignoring the music and dialogue (which I’ll focus on later), Skate completely nails its sounds. These items is the symphony of skateboarding and, if you’re in an actual movement, there’s an nearly meditative rhythm to it. The pops and pings, the scrapes and squeaks – these sounds are simply soothing, and I don’t understand how else to clarify it.
It should even be established that the texture of Skate, if you’re on a board a minimum of, continues to be supreme. I like the wild, arcade wackiness of Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater – and I respect the punishing, twin-stick precision required by the likes of skate sims like Session – however Skate’s controls are my jam. Nearly the whole lot I crave is wrapped up in its approachable but deceptively deep system. Tips on the suitable stick, turning on the left, grabs on the triggers, and grinds on… how good you might be at lining them up. There’s quite a lot of depth to unlock when you get the grasp of it.
Now, the brand new Skate doesn’t fairly feel and appear equivalent to the older video games. Turning seems a bit stiffer, and doubtless lacks a little bit of the extra pronounced and natural lean from the early Skate video games. The grind help can be significantly too sticky by default, and there’s positively jankiness current within the transition skating; I’m experimenting with the pump settings however haven’t fairly cracked a constant answer to at all times getting the momentum I would like and never getting randomly slowed down. Skitching is absent, and there are different lacking tips. General, nevertheless, it’s completely acquainted sufficient to be immediately intuitive to me as a returning participant. At a minimal, Skate has completed a high-quality job of reconstructing that buttery, legacy avenue skating really feel from the unique video games. That’s an necessary factor to convey again in case you’re going to make use of the basic identify.
Sadly, that’s all it introduced again.
Streaming the Dice
Making Skate an completely on-line expertise was a direct and utter mistake. Throughout my first session on the day of its early entry launch I used to be unceremoniously disconnected throughout a random problem and kicked out of the map, again to the primary menu. The error message right here was comically emblematic of my ideas on the general state of affairs. One thing went flawed? Sure, one thing definitely went flawed with Skate. Nevertheless it went flawed lengthy earlier than I began enjoying.
I’m, in fact, conscious that server issues and queues are typical of day considered one of a brand new on-line sport (though I’m nonetheless ready in queues the week after launch). The neighborhood has come to just accept this compromise as the other facet of the free-to-play coin. For me, that is uncharted territory. The final time I waited in a web based queue I used to be shopping for live performance tickets, however a minimum of I bought seats to Metallica out of it. Skate is giving me no such pleasure. It doesn’t profit from being an online-only stay service. It has new priorities, like promoting $25 clothes ensembles. To cross the downtime I performed a little bit of the present Skate trilogy (all of that are parked on my Xbox courtesy of backwards compatibility and can work simply high-quality offline as we speak, tomorrow, and in 10 years time).
In a deeply unlucky twist, enjoying the brand new Skate is recurrently simply as annoying as not having the ability to play it. From the get-go it’s evident each shred of the persona of the originals has been ruthlessly and shamelessly minimize away in favour of infantilised rubbish. Each a part of Skate has been corporatised and Disney-fied, from artwork model to perspective.
Keep in mind the genuine human characters that accompanied your skater as you progressed via the story modes of the outdated video games, who would blurt in sympathy as you tumbled down the dam for the tenth time, breaking each bone in your physique? Properly, overlook something like that. Your “filmer” within the new Skate is… an AI app, known as Vee, who simply often is the single worst online game character I’ve ever encountered. Vee’s dialogue is past nauseating, and is delivered in a faux-robotic vogue that makes it doubly terrible. It’s primarily a simulation of AI slop – like having a buddy that solely speaks to you want they’re studying the captions on a Tik-Tok video. The low-fi and real looking filmer strategy of the outdated Skate video games is significantly missed. In 2025, this might have been emulated simply by simply giving us an in-game buddy with a telephone. As a substitute, we’ve got an ill-conceived chatbot who regards my profitable tips as, “Algorithmic!”, refuses to cease “edu-skating” me on the actual fact “footy” means “video footage,” and mines 35-year-old LL Cool J songs for quips even my mum would wince at. “Your feminine mum or dad mentioned knock these goals out?” Good grief.
Holy Cow Oh My God
Sadly the “human” solid is not any higher. They’re saddled with an inauthentic, overwritten script full of cringeworthy sentences no particular person would ever say aloud, and contours I’m not even positive the voice actors fairly understood earlier than studying. Skate’s fascination with the time period “skater eyes” (which is inexplicably capitalised within the captions like some form of correct noun) is just baffling. It’s referenced with such heavy regularity that it sounds just like the identify of an in-game operate you may personally toggle on and off to spotlight specific components of the setting like Batman’s Detective Imaginative and prescient (like sure issues that are robotically coated in a yellow masks throughout some challenges) but it surely isn’t. It’s only a hackneyed slang phrase Skate has invented and overuses far past the purpose of parody.
Who says the phrase “BEEP” as a substitute of cursing, even mildly? The whole lot that is even a fraction edgy or mature has been masked underneath layers of company coddling, like these mushy, squishy curves that cease toddlers from splitting their heads on the nook of the kitchen bench. You may, I assume, mute the dialogue – however that doesn’t make it immune from criticism. Moreover, the dialogue can be only one a part of a cavalcade of complaints I’ve concerning the present state of Skate.
Why was it so necessary, for example, to concoct an in-universe clarification for the truth that no person in Skate’s new metropolis of San Vansterdam can endure any accidents? Making skaters invincible due to the medical miracle of “ImpervaTEK” doesn’t make Skate higher; it simply feels prefer it’s right here as a result of some swimsuit was nervous concerning the optics of kids enjoying a sport the place individuals tossing themselves off buildings might need to be depicted as being significantly harm. In consequence, Skate’s conventional post-wipeout x-rays and bone-snapping sound results are completely gone (as are bloody scrapes, grime, and put on on skaters and their boards).
My sons started enjoying the unique Skate video games from concerning the second every was sufficiently old to carry a controller. I vividly bear in mind them cackling uncontrollably at what number of bones they might break as their characters tumbled and fell, their skeletons squelching and shattering. Skate 2025 appears completely toothless compared. It treats its viewers like infants.
10 Issues I Skate About You
Skate’s artwork model doesn’t do it any favours, both. The stylised strategy could also be crisp and vibrant, but it surely’s additionally vanilla and boring. The doe-eyed, Sims-style character fashions do completely nothing for me, and this cartoony u-turn is a really unwelcome departure from the real looking strategy the collection beforehand took. I don’t like their plastic beards, or their chunky pants, and I definitely don’t like being surrounded by them always – notably when different gamers have a behavior of visibly stuttering, lagging, and even floating as they transfer by. It’s additionally a whole eyesore having everybody always clipping into one another, all plonked in entrance of the identical store counter – or teleporting and gathering atop the identical ramp. I don’t know the place I begin and everybody else begins.
There’s additionally an actual sterility to the town that the simplified visible model can’t shake. Plain partitions, impossibly clear surfaces – San Vansterdam simply isn’t a spot that feels reputable or lived-in. It feels faux as a result of it appears to be like faux. There’s not sufficient granular element or texture. Hell, typically there’s no texture in any respect, like when the roads seem to glitch and switch right into a featureless, uniformly black floor. That occurs loads.
San Vansterdam isn’t all that fascinating to skate round, both. The map is a largely flat downtown space, damaged up into 4 quadrants that aren’t notably distinct from one another. You may skate throughout it in about two minutes. There’s no zany hill descent, or dam drop, or wild spillway – nothing I’m drawn to gravitate in direction of like I’m in Skate 2’s San Vanelona. There was a way of reward to find a neat place to skate within the unique video games, as a result of the maps primarily felt like cities – not skateparks. The DNA of San Vansterdam is that the whole lot is skatepark-adjacent. High of a constructing? Skatepark. Inside a church? Skatepark. At this level, designing the town to be an unrestrained skate utopia simply appears like an excessive amount of – prefer it’s a giant, Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater degree as a substitute of a metropolis you may skate in. It’s bizarre when the unique Skate video games had been completely antithetical to that.
Talking of professional skaters, don’t anticipate to see any of these outdated faces within the new Skate. This clearly means no cleverly edited live-action intro montage full of recognisable skaters in foolish conditions. Beginning with a memorable quick movie might have change into a practice for the unique trilogy, however that concept seems to have been firmly kickflipped to curb. Extra disappointingly, nevertheless, it additionally means no professional challenges – no real-life skaters to satisfy and communicate to as you progress via what constitutes the marketing campaign in the intervening time.
Might professionals come to the sport later on this vogue? As a stay service… perhaps, I assume. However I’m very pessimistic they’d add the identical degree of persona they injected into the unique Skate video games. These had temporary cutscenes with forwards and backwards between the professionals and your sarcastic filmer. Is John Rattray going to have a dialog with a disembodied app on a floating video digital camera? I doubt it.
Because it stands proper now, the marketing campaign feels weak: half prolonged tutorial, half service sport treadmill, the place miscellaneous skating duties are rationed out each 24 hours. A few of these are satisfying sufficient, and so they do reward a sure diploma of mastery of Skate’s basic controls. There are stints of Skate the place I’m absorbed to a point, positive, however there’s surprisingly little to it proper now – notably contemplating how instantly the each day challenges have begun to repeat.
When it comes to solo content material, there are not any competitions, no demise races, no video games of S.Ok.A.T.E. No journal cowl shoots, or sponsorship challenges. The marketing campaign missions, or “excursions”, listed here are actually only a collection of classes. It’s clumsily paced, too, for the reason that solely method to unlock new excursions is to finish an intensive quantity of objectives from the miscellaneous trick challenges which might be refreshed every day. That’s, many hours after finishing a each day goal that required me to do a number of manuals, I discovered myself sleepwalking via a separate tutorial mission about how to guide. And this after Skate confirmed with me I’d performed Skate 3 earlier than I even set foot on a board.
Skate positive does love its assortment missions, although. In these it’s essential to skate a sure line whereas hitting a predetermined quantity of floating wheel bearings, or maybe skate via some basketball-sized chook poo. Both manner, it’s cellular game-inspired fluff. I’m not a bored toddler in a restaurant being handed an iPad whereas his dad and mom peruse the dessert menu, so that is simply not my scene.
That solely grew to become extra evident after I realised the entire development loop is just geared round accumulating sufficient in-game forex to open loot packing containers. Wish to rank up? You should return to the shop to set off that. Hey, when you’re on the retailer, why not open some packing containers of crap with all of your in-game credit? I didn’t hassle opening any for the primary few days as a result of I wasn’t , however I ultimately realised the packing containers additionally comprise extra repute factors which might be necessary for leveling up your neighbourhood rank and unlocking new quick journey spots – so that you mainly must open them. This implies sitting via the unskippable “Congratulations!” animation for every particular person one – that I assume has been meticulously modelled for max poker machine efficiency – each single time.
Which packing containers? These ones, simply previous all of the premium objects you must hand over actual cash for as a substitute. Wait, why are there bundles of things priced at 1600 Skate-bucks when Skate-bucks can be found in increments of 500 and 1050? Oops. Guess you’ll have to purchase greater than you want. It’s insidious and I hate it. I hate it in different video games and I hate it on this one. I’m not younger and resistant to the caveats of free-to-play gaming. It makes it really feel like a service and a retailer first, and a sport second.
Hell, perhaps that’s true. In any case, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
That’s what my feminine mum or dad used to say.
