3.75 of 5 stars

Release Date: January 21, 2009
Black Box/ EA
Playstation 3, Xbox 360
Official Site

The Tony Hawk-killer returns with the same sweet flick-stick controls, twice the amount of tricks, and the ability to create your own skate spots. The story goes like this: 5 years after “the disaster-too-gnarly-to-be-named”, you return to San Vanelona to find out it has been rebuilt by the family-friendly Mongocorp, which has killed the local skating scene. It’s up to you and a variety of skate stars to rebuild the local skating scene by uncapping spots and draining pools.

Blackbox left many of the best parts of Skate 1 untouched; the controls and go where you want game-play that made the first game so popular are nearly identical.  Skate 2 expands on this by allowing you to create your own skate spot by getting off your board and moving objects around to create sick sequences.

Our favorite part of the game is the Thrasher Hall of Meat, which allows you to punish your skater and then analyze and rank your bail by speed, distance and pain your skater endures.

While we like the realistic physics and flick-stick controls, we understand that Skate can take some getting used to and might even be a little underwhelming to fans of the over-the-top style and press button controls of the Tony Hawk series. It’s nice to have a more realistic skate simulator, but sometimes its fun to live in a crazy fantasy world.

While getting off your board is a welcomed addition to the game-play, the walking controls and camera are surprisingly sketchy.