Skate Story

My first impressions when I saw Skate Story was woah, this looks like a really cool game. I recently got the chance to play it and my impression has remained as, woah, that was a really cool game.

I think anyone’s first impression when seeing the game is how stylish and interesting the setting is. You’re a skateboarder in hell, eating moons for your soul. That, is a baller premise and definitely encouraged me to pick up the game. The second impression upon booting up the game is how fantastic the music is. Skating through hell to the OST is great and really adds to the game. Who would’ve thought that a chill soundtrack would fit so well with hell?

Skating in this game also feels really, really good. Granted, I’m not a skate game enthusiast (having really only played some of the tony hawk games) so I can’t compare it to many others, but it feels fun to slide around in and tricks are satisfying to perform. The controls for performing tricks is simple but there’s a lot of variation you can do which is fun to figure out. I liked that you technically have all your tricks from the start and that tutorials only really teach you the controls. It was fun for me to think “wait how did I do that?” and mash around a bunch haha.

My favourite gameplay segments are when you’re skating through all the halls and teleporting from one part to the next. The music combined with the fast changing levels is really fun and made it just a joy to go through.

I do have a few other gameplay critiques though. Mainly, the tricks/combos while fun, feels like there was room to add more. By the end of the game I kind of eventually settled into doing the same combos and the arenas while let you do some cool grinds, I think it would’ve been really cool to have some larger ramps to let you get more air and add some more tricks like holds. Also, some boss fights felt a little too… unvaried and I think it would be more fun if bosses had more gimmicks.

Another complaint I had with the presentation may be a personal eye issue, but I noticed that sometimes the subtitles were incredibly hard to read because they overlayed white with another white light. That’s more of a minor one, but I think just adding a little background could help make it legible.

All in all though, really cool game, and really cool experience. I think some of the story themes went over my head since I was too busy on focusing on skateboarding, but I loved the areas and general design!