November 26, 2009
My one painfully brief attempt at skate-boarding in the real world resulted in two bloody knees and a bruised ego…But armed with my trusty Dual Shock I could grind, ollie, and kick-flip with the best of ’em through Tony Hawk’s Playstation outings. So suitably stoked, I jumped on-board Gameloft’s latest, Skater Nation without hesitation.
And after spending some time rolling around “Sandifornia” (the game’s fictional setting), I’m happy to report Skater Nation does a pretty commendable job of recreating the thrills and spills of console skate ’em ups on iPhone/iPod touch. That said, some niggling problems unfortunately stop this title from being the hand-held alternative to games like SKATE and Tony Hawk Pro Skater it so obviously aspires to be.
Controls are tricky (geddit?) at first, but put in some practice on the tutorial and soon you’ll get to grips with the game’s set up. A d-pad moves your skater around, while a and b buttons handle jumps and pulling off tricks. Balancing when grinding is achieved by tilting the device. Graphics are good, but not as immediately impressive as those in some of Gameloft’s other recent titles, plus an overly zoomed-in view of your protagonist means he/she always seems to fill too much of the screen obstructing your perspective of the surroundings.
The open-world environment is equally underwhelming, and although the 3D city contains ten different skate-able areas including beaches, residential areas and the obligatory skate park, Sandifornia feels like a ghost town; with hardly anyone strolling its streets or traffic on the roads.The blink-and-miss-them loading times between areas are a positive though, as is the ability to unlock a vast array of boards, wheels, and trucks as you play. While upgrading your kit and fiddling about with wheel alignment and so forth adds depth to the title.
The “story” mode gives you the choice of eight equally gnarly dudes and dudettes to play as, but amounts to more or less the same game whoever you opt for, and has you competing against rival skaters, and completing challenges, whilst you rack up sick scores, and win trophies in a bid to be crowned champion of an annual skating competition (typically terrible writing and laughably poor dialogue from Gameloft is present and accounted for).
Free Ride on the other hand lets you loose on the streets to skate at your own pace, handily allowing you to visit any area by traveling through portals. Both modes can be good fun once you come to terms with the game’s limitations and master the challenging control scheme.
But to be brutally honest, the game feels a bit rushed and lacks the attention to detail and extra features I’ve come to expect from this developer (for example there’s no option to play your own tunes while you skate, meaning you’re stuck with the handful of generic tracks on offer). So overall Skater Nation doesn’t fall flat on its face, but never quite soars to the dizzying heights of its inspirations either.
Score: 7 out of 10
