Didn't get a chance to play this until recently. Now that I've leveled up a couple areas and got a feel for the progression of the game, I have a lot of mixed feelings, but overall the potential is very much there. They should've giving this a different name though . This is not skate 4 or a sequel to the OG games, but rather an online spin-off title
Core Gameplay is the strongest thing about this game. Feels like a slightly more grounded skate 3, but with way better animations and small QoL features to bring it up to parity with Session/SkaterXL simulation style games. However this game very much leans more towards the skate 3 arcadey style of gameplay when it comes to the missions and challenges. You doing a lot of roller coaster ass shyt when it comes to objectives. That said, there's enough depth in the gameplay to where you can totally just free skate and play realistically and they give you the sandbox to do that at a pretty good level. Animations are fire and better than anything else out now. Free skating with friends is super fun too.
Also this game 100% took so long to make because they built a full blown parkour game/suicide sim alongside the skating. This is straight up Assassin's Creed shyt the only other games with movement like this are where you play as a ninja or superhuman
. Gives the city much more verticality and space for rooftop parks but it's definitely the most different feeling thing about the gameplay so far. The players very first gameplay objective in the game is to run and climb up a 20 ft wall to get their first board
Now where this game inherently has friction is the live service aspect of obtaining gear and progression. It "
works" from a GaaS perspective but from a skateboarding perspective, a fukking loot box skate shop is the dumbest thing you could possibly imagine. Like, they basically WANTED to piss off anybody who wasn't 10 years old with that approach, particularly given skateboarding's generally anti-establishment nature. It's at least not TOO grindy if you have experience at the game but it feels so fukking dumb to be doing a bunch of challenges so I can get coins to buy a CHANCE to get the white tee shirt out of a loot box. If it weren't so easy for me to grind thru the challenges this would have me up in arms forreal. People are 100% gonna hate that shyt until they give people more options to get the specific gear they want. They also need to add way more brand content but im giving them a pass for now since this is early access (as they remind you profusely) and the first season starts in October.
Now this games utmost biggest flaw is the lack of CULTURE. THPS and the OG skate games very much immersed you into skate culture and did it in a very authentic way. This game has the most Disney Channel+Rocket Power ass vibe you can imagine and it's not the art style making me say that. Why in the absolute fukk is an AI assistant telling me that "footy" means footage? The missions/tours/progression system and dialogue is sooooooo fortnite-saturday morning cartoon shyt. Its like the game is more trying to immerse you into this MMO/Social skate loot grind community than actual skateboarding culture, which is quite jarring compared to damn near any real skateboarding game that's ever come before it.
Overall though, as I said before this is gonna be a game that people hella complain about but will certainly play
How well it does as a live service game is gonna come down to how well they listen to player feedback (they're hella pushing surveys so that's good), and how interesting they can get with brand collabs and seasonal updates. The core is there but it's still very raw overall. I'm interested to see how the game changes a year from now, but they need to figure out this game's true identity.
