I love what this is going for - a more realistic skateboarding sim that drops you in legendary skate spots (EMB, China Banks, Brooklyn Banks, LA ditches) and asks you to think about your run, the path you take, and what tricks you can attempt and pull off to max out your score before having to escape the cops. It gets closer to imitating the experience of IRL street skating by putting you into a similar frame of mind that figuring to how to skate a spot asks of you.
Unfortunately, the physics, the controls, and general feel of the gameplay lets this game down. L1 + Square + Up to nail a manual? Triangle and circle to try a frontside flip? L1 + X + Down for a bluntslide? Absolutely nonsensical. Skate sims would get much better about this starting with the Skate series, using the analogue sticks to approximate your skater's footwork, and recent games like Session and Skater XL tweak this approach to allow you to get really granular with your virtual skating in much more interesting, expressive ways. Coming back to this is really difficult now that we have those games, but this game at least has a vibe and an attitude that the newer skate indies don't really have imo. One of those 'respect more than I enjoy' type games for sure.
Unfortunately, the physics, the controls, and general feel of the gameplay lets this game down. L1 + Square + Up to nail a manual? Triangle and circle to try a frontside flip? L1 + X + Down for a bluntslide? Absolutely nonsensical. Skate sims would get much better about this starting with the Skate series, using the analogue sticks to approximate your skater's footwork, and recent games like Session and Skater XL tweak this approach to allow you to get really granular with your virtual skating in much more interesting, expressive ways. Coming back to this is really difficult now that we have those games, but this game at least has a vibe and an attitude that the newer skate indies don't really have imo. One of those 'respect more than I enjoy' type games for sure.