08-28-2008, 11:10 AM
"Having spent a good amount of time completing objectives in San Vanelona and other areas in the game, we're quite impressed with how Skate It plays and the wealth of gameplay on offer."
Daemon Hatfield, IGN Wii
I honestly don't have much experience with EA's skate. series, other than the PlayStation Network demo. If the Wii version of the game can pull it off with IGN, however, it may just tickle me as a useful purchase. The biggest "pull" of Skate It is perhaps the photo challenges, which offer the player the chance to capture all of their "uber-phat skittles" (excuse the skate-speak) with a screenshot, taken by photographer "Reda", himself a large part of the story.
Details of the story mode so far are pretty slim, but we do know that San Vanelona, the city which your skater resides in, is destroyed by a natural disaster, opening up many, many more skating opportunities and hotspots than the previous iteration of the series.
IGN are, without a doubt, impressed with the Wii version's "FlickIt" control scheme. They claim that any trick in your repertoire is only a "flick of your wrist" away, steamrolling over any cynicism previously held for Skate It's motion controls. I have to show my own enthusiasm for the Wii Balance Board control scheme, having splashed out on Wii Fit a few months ago. If EA have mastered the Balance Board's functions, then it should make for an appealing game!
The "MySpots" feature seems heavily inspired by Activision's "Tony Hawk's Proving Ground", where the player can choose to customize his own spots in the wreckage of San Vanelona. I won't reject it until I play it, however. If the MySpots feature is as polished as the rest of the game, then surely there's no reason to downplay it.
Skate It is launching for Nintendo Wii and DS this Fall.
Written By: Aaron Hastings