With Activision’s Tony Hawk Pro Skater, the Birdman asserted himself as the king of the skateboarding genre, decimating all would-be deposers and making it very difficult for anyone to challenge. However, EA has decided to throw their hat into the ring with their own take on the skateboarding genre with their latest extreme sports game, skate.

skate is a simple name to say the least, but that simplicity has a bearing on the game itself, as that’s pretty much what the game focuses on. You won’t be performing three-million point combos nor will you be able to grind for miles or do a 900 over a helicopter; in skate you will be performing real world moves grounded firmly in the laws of physics and gravity. skate’s use of physics and intuitive controls create the purest and most realistic form of skateboarding ever to hit a console, even though the rest of the game is slightly sparse.

skate uses the analog sticks for performing ollies, kickflips as well as manuals, with the shoulder buttons controlling their respective hands for grabs. The face buttons will allow you to push off with either your left or right foot in order to gain speed, as well as brake with the B button. These controls are pretty tough to get a hold of. It will take you a while to learn all of the nuances and moves, let alone master them.

Tony Hawk’s ease of play has kind of made many gamers lazy when it comes to skateboarding games as we tend to take certain elements of the extreme sport for granted, and skate is here to whip us back into shape. Ollies require you to push down and up on the right thumbstick instead of a single button press. No longer will you simply be able to magically wind up on a rail when you try to grind, you’ll have to position yourself just right and land on it from the right angle (however you land also determines the type of grind that you do). Even transitioning from flatland skating to vert requires you to pump by pushing the left thumbstick forward and shifting your body weight in order to get the most air. The intricacies of skate’s controls are very deep and performing moves that would seem like nothing in the Tony Hawk games can be very complex, yet very rewarding.

However, for the intuitiveness of the controls, skate does leave a bit to be desired in the rest of the game. The career mode follows the cliché of being a faceless “create-a-skater” working your way up from a nobody to a world-renowned pro skateboarder. This means meeting up with famous skaters and running menial errands and performing tricks for them so you gain prestige. These missions don’t really have a lot of substance to them, and range from performing in tournaments to simply following them through the city of San Vanelona while performing a certain kind of trick. These goals can range from repetitive to utterly frustrating. Since the game is fully analog, some goals are unnecessarily difficult, requiring you to perform tough combos that are exacerbated by the tough to master controls.

Additionally, the game leaves no room for expansion and growth for your character as you progress, meaning that your character is as good from the get-go as he’ll ever be, and all the improvement lies on your shoulders. The game also has a few weird issues with loading times. While the whole city does a fine job of streaming while you’re on your board, failing a goal will kick you to a brief loading screen. This wouldn’t usually be a huge problem, but considering how often you’ll bail in skate, it can become very frustrating.

Still, for its shortcomings, skate still offers some great features. The user-generated content by way of the skate.reel is a nice touch. The game will allow you to take the last 30 seconds of any run, edit the footage of it and post it online for people to see. While some games do this and limit it to simply an in-game feature, skate lets you post them on a community site for the game that is viewable by anyone online.

Graphically, skate looks pretty good. The character models look nice, and the big sprawling city looks great. However, there are a few weird problems. The facial effects on the pro skaters can border from inaccurate to downright creepy, and the camera angles have a tendency to go buggy at the most inopportune times, often causing you to bail when you really shouldn’t have. Fortunately, the game moves at a decent clip, only slowing down when there’s a ton of activity on the screen.

The soundtrack is a pretty diverse mix of old and new tracks from a variety of genres, with songs from David Bowie, Slayer, Dead Prez, and Nirvana. However, you’ll only really hear it in spurts, as it only really appears in game when you approach an area of interest on the map (basically, it’s a cue that you’re approaching a nice skating spot). The game also has some pretty nice voice acting, including bantering by passersby on the street that can be pretty funny.

The real winner in the sound department though it the sound effects. The sound team must have done a ton of work, because they totally nailed the wheel sounds. Going over different surfaces creates a totally different, yet accurate sound, while you’ll actually be able to hear your wheels spin in the air when you do an ollie. It’s touches like this that help the game be completely immersive.

With some truly innovative control elements, skate provides a serious threat to the Tony Hawk franchise as the top dog of the skateboarding genre. While there are still elements to be ironed out in terms of content, skate does so many things right that it could be the start of something big.

Gameplay: 8.5
The controls are fantastic and a welcome change to the genre. Completely physics-based and analog, skateboarding has never felt so real. However, the game is a bit scant on gameplay features, with bland objectives and no way of improving your character, aside from aesthetic upgrades.

Graphics: 8.0
Graphically, the game does the trick (no pun intended), but still isn’t the best looking game around, due to some spotty facial animations and some goofy camera angles.

Sound: 9.5
skate has some truly fantastic sound, thanks to a dynamic soundtrack (it gets louder when you approach a cool place to skate) and some of the best skateboarding sound effects ever. Hearing the wheels spin in mid-air when you ollie as well as the different effects depending on the terrain is awesome.

Difficulty: Hard
Getting down all of the nuances of skate’s controls is pretty tough, to say the least, and should keep you busy.

Multiplayer: 9.0
skate has some nice multiplayer games that allow for up to six players to take each other on in the game, either on or offline, playing some of the games that pop up in the career mode, like S.K.A.T.E. (a variation on H.O.R.S.E.) and the best trick contests. However, the main element of skate’s online component is the user-generated content, which lets you create and edit your own skateboarding videos and post them online for the entire world to see.

Concept: 8.5
skate does some truly great things with the skateboarding genre when it comes to the controls, but the shallow gameplay leaves something to be desired.

Overall: 8.5
skate showcases some awesome potential and could eventually develop into a franchise capable of dethroning the Birdman as the king of console skateboarding. While the lean career mode could use a bit more substance, this is the game to get if you’re a hardcore skateboarding fan looking for something a little different.