Skate It, EA’s Wii version of their popular Skate series, introduces some great ideas and new ways to play a skateboarding game, but doesn’t necessarily succeed in all areas.
Before I get into this review, though, I just want to let y’all know that I wasn’t able to play Skate It with the Wii Balance Board, well, because I don’t own one. Instead, I used the Wii Remote and Nunchuk combo, which I honestly found to be a fun and suitable way to play, but far from being perfect. I’ll get to that later in the review.
There are three main modes in Skate It: Career, Free Skate, and Party Play which supports multiplayer gameplay, but sadly doesn’t let you all play at once and requires you to hand off the Wii Remote after each turn — not the best way to get a “party” started.
The Career mode has you start off as a created skater in the fictional city of San Vanelona that, conveniently, has been hit with a bunch of freak disasters and left the city deserted and in ruins. It’s now the perfect spot to record your skateboarding skills and try to become Thrasher magazine’s prestigious Skater of the Year.
Much of the Career mode has you completing different tasks and objectives such as getting X number of points, grinding X number of times, or reaching this or that area — not the most thrilling Career mode, but that’s not what really matters in Skate It. What really matters is how you play the game and that’s where the control scheme comes into place.
What makes Skate It such a unique game also makes it such an average game. Playing with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, the control scheme is all about the “Flick-it” style of play. You literally just flick the Wii Remote to perform an Ollie or a Nollie and with a twist this way or that way, you’ll be performing all sorts of different tricks. Sound cool, huh? Well it is, that is until you’re really trying to land a specific trick.
Say I was trying to perform a 360 pop-shovit. I flick the Wii Remote and successfully perform it, but once I go for the same trick again, I’ll get a kick flip or another entirely different trick. That’s the thing about the control scheme in Skate It, it’s just not dependable enough to actually read your precise actions. A great idea and fun to use, but just doesn’t work all the time, especially when you really need it to. I’d say the Wii Remote responds accurately 75 to 80 percent of the time, which is not terribly bad, but it’s far from perfect.
Graphically, the game is outdated and looks like a GameCube game. Both player models and skate parks could’ve been refined a lot more; however, the skate parks are well designed, offering a number of ramps and grinds for your skateboarding needs. One cool thing about the skate parks is the “My Spot” feature, which allows you to customize a few areas of the park to your liking.
I like the idea of using the Wii Remote and the “Flick-it” controls, but for the next iteration of the game, I can only hope that EA and Black Box work just a bit more with the Wii Remote and the control scheme to perfect it. The bottom line here is that Skate It is a decent skateboarding game. Wii owners looking for something to grind with should maybe check it out, but I’d really only recommend it to fans of the genre.
