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Skate 2 releasing in January

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PS3 gamers should be really happy they got it right this time around. I heard the first one was a mess..

Edit: Wait, those videos are on 360!
 
wmat said:
Edit: Wait, those videos are on 360!
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Yeah, I found that odd too. You can see "LB" when he brings up the menu to set a marker.
 
Rather than jumping into any career goals as events like this aren't exactly great for really digging into a career, I instead roamed around the city to see what the new layout is like. I first jumped to a spot called "Dueling Snakes" which turned out to be a rather cool skatepark designed with plenty of swooping and twirling trenches (hence the snake reference). You can get a lot of speed here because of the layout, and since the whole thing is basically comprised of hills, pretty much any section of the park is great for launching off of and performing a couple board flips. There isn't a ton of air to be caught here, but for stringing together a huge series of quick tricks, you won't find too many better-situated spots.

Next I headed to S.V. Stadium, which is Skate 2's version of the X-Games arena we saw last time out. Yes, a Mega Ramp is present here, this time featuring multiple parts and paths you can take. Huge ramps align pretty much the entire stadium, giving you plenty of chances to try and perfect your 900s and quadruple heel flips. Of course, you'll want to have your ramp pumping down by the time you hit this spot as you'll need to get good at running up and down ramps, but the potential for massive scores is definitely here.

Next, I decided it was time to jump into some online play, or as I should put it, online functionality as the connected portion is about more than just competition. I've previously talked about being able to create your own spots, but I finally got the chance to try it out at the event. Jumping off your board, you can push and pull pretty much anything in the world that makes sense (i.e. tables, trash bins, benches, etc.) After you line up a nice little run, you can choose to define the spot itself by manipulating a highlight box and enclosing any area that scoring should count within. In the interested of time, I just stuck two picnic tables at the end of a staircase rail to extend it. After highlighting the rail and both tables, the game had me set the score by actually hitting the spot myself. You can't just assign a score, you have to be able to actually do it yourself, which is definitely cool. Once I had a score I was happy with, I just chose to share the spot and it was uploaded in a matter of seconds. Then an EA rep sitting next to me on another machine browsed to my name, downloaded my spot and attempted to beat my score. Very fast, easy and slick. Good stuff.

The competitive and co-op stuff was also great fun. When you join a game, you're put into a freeskate session in the given spot. While playing online, the world isn't streamed off the disc, so you're confined to whatever section the host chose to start the game in, though the areas are rather huge. Each is a pretty big chunk of the city, so you have a ton of area to skate around in before hitting the outer limit.

As for play options, you'll find returning classics like Spot Battle. This time around, you're able to vote for others when it's not your turn based on whatever you want - style, points or what have you. Whoever gets the most votes gets a bonus for the round, potentially helping to secure them the win.

The coolest bits however are Freeskate Activities. Eerily similar (in a good way) to the Freeburn Challenges in Burnout Paradise, you'll find more than 150 unique challenges to take part in. One I tried had me and a cohort skating through a trench while trying to keep our speed up for 45 seconds without leaving the area. This wasn't too difficult, but it took us a couple minutes to get our groove down.

Score challenges are in, as are goes at besting your foes in Hall of Meat challenges. Really, the amount of content here was way too daunting for me to grasp in 30 minutes with the game, but the potential and variety looks stellar.
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http://ps3.ign.com/articles/936/936621p1.html

The focus of EA's showcase was Skate 2's freeskate activities, the new bag of challenges you and five other online skaters can take part in by simply pulling up a menu while freeskating and electing to join. We spoke with several members of the Black Box development team, and they made no bones about the fact that fellow EA property Burnout Paradise was a big source of inspiration in this department. It makes sense when you think about it: Burnout Paradise made the idea of spontaneous multiplayer challenges work in a genre--open world racer--where most people would be inclined to fly around and do their own thing.

The process works like this: You can skate around the city at your leisure during the game's Career mode, but if you feel like getting into a session with a few other live players, you just hit the D pad and pull up a menu that lets you select the "freeskate here" option. Once you select it, you'll hop into a quick online match with room for up to six players. From there, anyone can use the D pad to pull up a list of freeskate activities unique to the parking lot or skatepark you find yourself in. Once a player proposes an activity, the rest of the players can then choose to take part or to sit it out and keep freeskating until the next suggestion pops up.

These freeskate activities vary from being as simple as collecting the most points while gapping between fallen street signs in a parking lot, to nailing all five massive gaps in Danny Way's mega ramp compound. Some have you working as a team to grind a set distance, like 1,000 feet, while some are more competitive, like a Hall of Meat challenge that awards you for receiving the most gruesome injury. Like in Burnout, these challenges will scale depending on the number of players, so you won't be stuck trying to grind for six if it's just the two of you.

One of the other new features we tried out was the sharing feature of the new Create-a-Spot ability. We've previously discussed how you can hop off your board and grab on to small objects, such as picnic tables, benches, and grind rails, and arrange them to your liking. What you might not have known, though, is that you can save these arrangements, assign a score objective, and upload them for other players to enjoy. Once that's done, you can go see the spots that your friends have uploaded or sift through the work of the public at large with the help of a five-star rating system. A similar system will be used for shared multimedia, like the videos you've edited in-game, the still images you've pulled from said clips, and the custom graphics you've created for your gear. The idea is to help you quickly find material your friends have made, the best stuff from the public, and featured videos that might not be getting the love they deserve--all through an intuitive in-game browser. We've also been told that a new skate.reel Web site will be launched along with the game, but we haven't seen that yet. However, anyone who tried uploading a video at the launch of the first game knows that the means of sharing can only stand to improve--it's just a matter of how much.

This was also our first opportunity to spend some quality time with the game in a nearly complete state--at least in terms of its overall layout. The new setting, a post-disaster San Vanelona that has been massively rebuilt, should feel both familiar and different all at once. Several of the neighborhoods are brand new, but a few, like the Res, are being carried over from the first game. However, it's mainly the street plan that has made the transition, because almost all of the objects are new. So there's a slight feeling of deja vu on certain roads, but everything you're skating on, from the benches to the ledges, is very much different. That's just the case for a couple of areas, though. Most of the city is new and far more diverse in terms of its landscape.
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http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/sports/skate2workingtitle/news.html?sid=6202065
 
Wow, I can't wait for this. Too bad I may or may not have a job then.....

BTW, I beat the hell out of Skate 1 but now everytime I try to just go around and free skate the ground disappears and I fall into oblivion. LOL. Anyone else have this problem.
 
HOLY FUCK! THAT CONCRETE PARK!!!!!!

I really want to see how it handles lip tricks now

DOUBLE HOLY FUCK! IT'S GOT THE FIRST SONG OUT OF POWELL'S 'PUBLIC DOMAIN' VIDEO!! It's in the IGN ramp it up video. Shit just gave me shivers! Even when they put you in a ridiculously THPS environment, such as that Ramp It Up video, the physics of the world keep it all beleiveable. Like, this COULD be done if you were a total nutcase with more skills than brains.

Man, if this new 'feet off' mechanic allows me to do a big lofty Hosoi-esque frontside madonna, i'll be sooo stoked.

And FUCK that dude playing the Meat Grinder vid...
 
666 said:
HOLY FUCK! THAT CONCRETE PARK!!!!!!

I really want to see how it handles lip tricks now

DOUBLE HOLY FUCK! IT'S GOT THE FIRST SONG OUT OF POWELL'S 'PUBLIC DOMAIN' VIDEO!! It's in the IGN ramp it up video. Shit just gave me shivers! Even when they put you in a ridiculously THPS environment, such as that Ramp It Up video, the physics of the world keep it all beleiveable. Like, this COULD be done if you were a total nutcase with more skills than brains.

Man, if this new 'feet off' mechanic allows me to do a big lofty Hosoi-esque frontside madonna, i'll be sooo stoked.

And FUCK that dude playing the Meat Grinder vid...
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:D

i likes you. spoken like a true skate head...

that park blew my mind too.
 
god damn, I should never have watched a vid in motherfucking december.!!! :(:( I have a burning urge to go skate, but it's wet and there's sand and shit all over the roads. ;(
 
hie said:
:D

i likes you. spoken like a true skate head...

that park blew my mind too.
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It's like when a new Skate vid would come out, it'd just get me so amped. I can remember the first time I saw animal chin with my buddies at a dudes house I didn't even know. We all watched it and then went out and skated his miniramp as hard as tiny little turds could.

This game can't arrive early enough..
 
Man...they even added a transparency to your skater in places where it makes sense. I think this game will be unprecedented in taking only steps forward and not taking any back.
 
Brobzoid said:
god damn, I should never have watched a vid in motherfucking december.!!! :(:( I have a burning urge to go skate, but it's wet and there's sand and shit all over the roads. ;(
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I hear you. It's fucking disgusting and cold out. I really need to find somewhere inside to skate =/
 
Zoso said:
I hear you. It's fucking disgusting and cold out. I really need to find somewhere inside to skate =/
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I used to skate at my work's parking garage, but I got fired ;( so my swipe card doesn't work anymore...
 
Frencherman said:
No Balance-Board-Features = No buy

I can't go back to gamepad with those games...
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2dtyw3r.jpg


In that preview they talk about the new co-op free skate objectives. Just like Burnout Paradise, so awesome.
 
Do we know if there will be a choice to disable the fisheye lens camera effect? I can imagine that ruining the game for me and Skate is my favourite game of this generation so far.
 
Exarchos said:
Finally got the graphic editor to work. It's awesome.


8a0088dd1e2bc3f3011e2bc59e11000f-1229095018001.png
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Wow that looks really good. Seriously hope there is a demo for this game though (just so I can play it a few days sooner heh).

Anyone know of any preorder bonues/LE content(is there one)/ect? Going to reserve via amazon if nobody else is having a deal on it.
 
Brandson said:
Do we know if there will be a choice to disable the fisheye lens camera effect? I can imagine that ruining the game for me and Skate is my favourite game of this generation so far.
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i don't actually think it's standard. i believe it's either an option or only for the videos.
 
So awesome. I'm hoping they release the demo around Christmas as a present! Finally got my sractched Skate disc to work again by installing to my hdd and playing it that way. Anyone up for some freeskate? XBL: Tokubetsu.
 
I've already played the game for a little more than 8 hours and it was awesome. The game is a noticeable improvement over the original Skate and they really tightened up things where it was needed.

Moving around objects is really fun, wait until you guys get to make some Frankenstein areas by lugging park benches and picnic tables around.
 
Jeff-DSA said:
I've already played the game for a little more than 8 hours and it was awesome. The game is a noticeable improvement over the original Skate and they really tightened up things where it was needed.

Moving around objects is really fun, wait until you guys get to make some Frankenstein areas by lugging park benches and picnic tables around.
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Is it running at 60fps?
 
Jeff-DSA said:
I've already played the game for a little more than 8 hours and it was awesome. The game is a noticeable improvement over the original Skate and they really tightened up things where it was needed.

Moving around objects is really fun, wait until you guys get to make some Frankenstein areas by lugging park benches and picnic tables around.
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Why do you tell us about the awesome :( I'm dying to play this game. Oh, and after the mission it was to link gamertags to EA accounts I bet it's going to be great fun trying to import logos into the game :/
 
Another awesome improvement is the video creation/upload feature. I made a clip where I did a backflip over a huge gap and I went with a behind view on the approach, switched to an underside view during the gap, and went to a front view for the landing. Also, I dropped the speed down to 20% of normal speed during the gap. People are going to make some sweet videos, I'm sure of it.
 
Jeff-DSA said:
Another awesome improvement is the video creation/upload feature. I made a clip where I did a backflip over a huge gap and I went with a behind view on the approach, switched to an underside view during the gap, and went to a front view for the landing. Also, I dropped the speed down to 20% of normal speed during the gap. People are going to make some sweet videos, I'm sure of it.
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This was in the original, unless you mean new angles.
 
Brobzoid said:
for heaven's sake... It's been confirmed at 60 time and time again.
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It was confirmed by the dev team, but the people that played the build at the unveiling said that the framerate was no different from the original and the footage they showed on Spike recently wasn't running at 60fps either.
 
Jeff-DSA said:
Yeah, the camera control is much better now. You have follow and tripod options with awesome angle abilities.
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That's actually great news. The more options they give the user the more dramatic the vids. I really hope they make it easier to link tags/upload vids this time around.
 
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