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Skate 2 at 15: Viva San Vanelona

Skate 2 turned 15 years old this week, and I never stopped playing it. Even when the servers slowly went to hell and made it harder (eventually impossible) for you to skate with other people or watch their clips, I'd still feel the urge to boot it up and screw around. In that eight year stretch where it wasn't backwards compatible with modern Xboxes, I kept a 360 hooked up just so I could always have a way to play it, and even afterwards only felt comfortable unplugging it after buying a digital copy on the 360 marketplace so I wouldn't even need to put the disc in my Series X.

Not many games have this sort of power over me. More recent indie efforts like Session and Skater XL don't capture that same feeling, and even Skate 3, a game with a fair share of features you could only view as improvements to the series, can't quite be as absorbing. So what is it about Skate 2 that's made it a constant for nearly half my life? I guess you can start with the obvious: how it feels to play.

When I think about a lot of my absolute favorite video games—shooters like Quake, platformers like Mario and Sonic, or even a strategy game like Worms Armageddon—the through-line between them is clear: there's a simple joy to the fundamental movement of the game. It goes without saying that platformers live and die by their running and jumping, but Quake is similarly defined by its breakneck speed and movement tech, and even with Worms (where the standard ground movement is deliberately sluggish), the high-risk-high-reward flinging granted by the Ninja Rope item is so ubiquitous to the series that a lot of fans outright ignore entries that don't get its physics right. When something as fundamental as simply getting around in a video game is its own fun, it makes it very easy to play something just for the sake of it, and the Skate series embodies that quality.

Skate's analog stick-driven Flickit trick system is a contentious one depending on who you ask, and when you think about the skateboarding games that came before it, that's understandable. The immediacy of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater's "direction + button = trick" formula came to define the genre in the series' heyday thanks to its approachable, pick-up-and-play nature (even Hawk-era games striving to be more grounded and technical like Thrasher: Skate and Destroy still rely on similar button combinations for its tricks), so of course Skate's idiosyncratic control scheme and the nuance it provides isn't going to be for everybody. Should you overcome the comparatively steep learning curve, however, Flickit becomes immensely rewarding to work with. Getting around feels incredibly natural, and you're given an unparalleled degree of control over things like the speed of your flip tricks, the height of your jumps, and the motion of your grabs—all with movements of the right analog stick. It delivers a level of finesse and a connection between you and the board that feels like nothing else in the genre.

This depth the Flickit system provides (along with the generally higher risk of outright bailing) puts a greater emphasis on landing single tricks than your average skateboarding game. A rail, ramp, or gap is usually a means to an end as part of a larger combo in other games, but like how simulation racers in the vein of Forza and Gran Turismo contrast arcade racers by finding simpler joys in hitting a corner's apex just perfectly, Skate relishes the smaller moments, treating them as setpieces unto themselves. That perfectly smooth grind down a slanted staircase railing. The clean landing of a half-pipe transfer you put that extra bit of spin to. A miraculous rooftop drop onto a nearby incline. Having any one of these things go off without a hitch after throwing yourself at them repeatedly brings a sense of accomplishment that rivals any million-point Pro Skater combo (while the ragdoll physics and crunchy sound work ensure that failure is its own entertainment without getting too graphic), and it's something that makes you look at the world with a different eye compared to other extreme sports games; one that feels a little closer to an actual skateboarder's.

Instead of thinking about how you can link your surroundings together for huge combos, you think about what looks and feels good, approaching individual landmarks from all angles to pick them apart, eventually getting off your board to drag nearby props over to either mutate the spot or slot the object in as the missing piece that makes something skatable with flair. Maybe you'll even want to edit the replay and upload it to the game's Skate Reel gallery of user-made photos and replays—or in these days of dead servers, save it manually with the Xbox's built-in recording. Each Skate game has scoring mechanics and career modes, all with the unique objectives and trappings you'd expect from them, but it's these naturally occurring, self-imposed "I wonder if I can do that?" moments that end up being the best challenges in the series.

And this is where Skate 2 really stands out from the other games in the trilogy as something special: its setting is perhaps as perfect a canvas for its gameplay as you can ask. New San Vanelona, a renovated take on the original game's city (the result of an earthquake that occurred in the Wii and DS-exclusive spinoff, Skate It), is a sprawling skate wonderland full of diverse environments, each brimming with unique opportunities to capitalize on. Every region has its own makeup that feels catered to a specific style of skateboarding: Cougar Mountain's hillside roads are made for careening down, the dilapidated buildings and rooftops of the Boneyard are begging for prop improvisation, and there are multiple skate parks and mega complexes that grant intoxicatingly big air. Proceed for a few seconds in any direction and you'll find an interesting spot to skate, an object to drag around for use in a setup, or some insane drop or steep road you can use to either set up a huge jump or simply eat shit after building up speed. Each location gracefully the flows into the next, with smaller skate spots peppered in along the way, making it incredibly easy to lose hours just mindlessly roving around the city, seeing what corners of the world speak to you at a given moment. The first game's take on the city is decent, but feels a little barren by comparison (it doesn't help that it lacks the moveable props or the ability to get off your skateboard, making it harder to set things up), and the third game's Port Carverton is segregated into three disconnected biomes that can't quite inspire the same creativity as New San Vanelona.

Skate 2's level design is so engrossing that some of its most memorable spots exist entirely by accident, never intended to actually be used. The series is no stranger to glitches, as I'm sure you've seen on YouTube, but it can be used for more than just funny highlights and bails. While they can end up spoiling the competitive aspect of the wipeout-based objectives, certain exploits can be used to bend the rules and get a little extra help in making something happen. Depending on the glitch you use, you can build up speed quickly in a tight location or launch yourself dozens (sometimes hundreds) of feet into the air, and more enterprising skaters can use this to reach new heights that give their surroundings a whole new complexion. One such spot is found by Slappy's skate park, an early-game location that's introduced to you via a roll-in drop that leads into the first major air you catch in the game. It's fun enough to mess around in on its own, but if you exploit a glitch to work your way to its adjacent rooftops, you can make it to the top of nearby hangar that just so happens to line up with the roll-in jump's landing. The result is an enormous leap that dwarfs that original roll-in gap, with a landing that grants you the kind of speed that lets you approach the nearby quarter-pipes and jumps in new ways, clearing huge spine transfers and even letting you jump from the ground to another nearby roof. It adds an extra dimension to what was already one of my favorite stomping grounds in the game, taking what was once well-worn territory over the top. Skate 2 has its own themes of anti-authority sprinkled in (an evil corporation controls the Financial District of the city and has capped rails and hired security to make places unskatable, something you deal with in the course of the career mode), but it's this kind of glitch-induced trespassing through half-finished outskirts of the game that really nails urban skateboarding's spirit of rebellious expression in a way that only video games could. That it was never intended in the first place only makes it that much sweeter.

The beauty of it all is that Slappy's is just a microcosm of what it's like to play Skate 2. It feels like every inch of New San Vanelona is littered with opportunities for all sorts of unique stunts and slams, and the result is one of the most gratifying emergent gameplay experiences I've ever had. For all the possibilities Skate 3 grants with its user-created skate parks and the ability to drop props into the world at-will, it just can't match the magic of Skate 2's four-wheeling wanderlust, and even with an upcoming new entry that has a promising focus on communal creativity (almost like some sort of skateboarding Minecraft), I wouldn't be surprised if I stuck with this game for another 15 years.

#Skate #gaming #video games #Skate 2

Skate 2 at 15: Viva San Vanelona

#Skate #gaming #video games #Skate 2

#skate 2

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