Getting a controlling skate

One of the things that revolutionised Skate was its control method. It eschewed the traditional button-mashing method of the Tony Hawk games and instead relied on much simpler control by just using the analogue sticks. The left stick is used mainly for steering, while the right stick is used to control your skater and perform tricks.

Skate 2 changes nothing with the control method – after all, it worked for the first game, so why change it? Still, there were a few criticisms aimed at the original game and EA Black Box has listened to a certain extent and extended the range of tricks that you can perform.

The problem is that the stick movements needed for each trick are all very similar and often quite subtle in difference, so it's quite common to find yourself performing a trick that you didn't actually want to do – something that can be annoying when you're trying to perform a particular trick as part of a challenge.

Added to this, your skater often doesn’t move as quickly as you’d like him to during tricks. For example, early on in the game, you’re tasked with performing a number of tweaked grabs. Unfortunately, you'll find that you don’t have the time to perform a full tweak, or that you pull off the tweak just in time to faceplant the concrete. Just remember to give yourself enough time in the air and you should be fine.


The camera can often be a little clunky and is probably best described as less "over the shoulder" and more "up the arse" – the default position for the camera seems to be behind and slightly below waist-level, something that can be annoying when you're trying to line up for a jump or a grind.

A new addition this time round is the ability to get off your skateboard and walk around the city if you need to. This can be quite useful at times – it's a lot easier to walk up a flight of steps than it is to try and ollie up them all. Getting off your board also allows you arrange furniture and ramps, whether to simply clear your line or to get them in the best position to perform tricks or jumps.

However, walking around is not as easy as you'd think – you are a natural-born skater, after all – and the controls when walking feel really awkward, and you spend more time fighting them than walking; sometimes it feels as though it really would be easier to ollie up the steps than to walk up them.

Once you're through the introductory tasks, you're free to roam around the city at will, either in search of new competition or just for the fun of skating around a large city. There are a number of different challenges for you to perform, including photo shoots, races and head-to-head trick competitions.


Some tasks, especially photo shoots, require you to perform a series of tricks across a certain area, and to help with this it's possible to mark your position, as well as the position of any ramps, by using your mobile phone so that if you bail or knock the ramp you can reset your position and the position of the ramp exactly how you had it before. EA Black Box has been a little tongue-in-cheek with the model of mobile phone that you use to mark your position or call useful contacts: the phone in question is a T-Mobile Sidekick, a phone made famous in the US by Tony Hawk's sponsorship.

Even though there is a story of sorts, there is no real career progression as such – there are no skill points to allocate, and the skill of your skater is completely down to your skill with the controller. This does mean that the range of challenges open to you at any time is greater than they would be if there was some career progression in the game, so if you get stuck on one particular challenge, there are always several others to try out in the meantime.