Skate It (Wii)

When skating games stop getting fun start getting real...
12/1/2008 7:32 PM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 3

The history of videogames has always been, in part, a journey from abstraction to realism. Early on, this journey focused on realistic presentation -- making games that looked and sounded more like real life. Now that game systems are grasping closer and closer to photorealistic visuals and immersive surround-sound audio, the push for realism has begun to skew towards creating more realistic simulations and control schemes.

The push towards realism in simulation was perhaps exemplified by EA's Skate, a 2007 release that eschewed the fantastical, high-flying antics of the long-running Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series for a more grounded interpretation of skateboarding. This year, EA's extended the push to realism in controls with Skate It, a Wii spinoff that uses the Wii Balance Board to approximate a real-world skateboard. The issue isn't how well they've succeeded in replicating the real skateboarding experience -- I'd be ill-equipped to answer that question anyway -- but, as always, whether this push towards realism has made the game more fun. The answer with Skate It is a qualified no.

Granted, you don't have to control Skate It with the Balance Board. The developers at EA deserve credit for including a mode that maps a wide variety of skateboarding moves to the largely button-free Wii remote. The move from button-presses to remote-wiggling isn't pain-free, though. Some tricks, like front-footed nollie flips, are made overly complex by requiring uncomfortably angled wrist-twisting to pull off, while others, like two-wheeled manual balances, are made too easy by requiring a simple constant tilt of the Wii remote. The larger problem, though, is that the Wii remote hardware isn't sensitive enough to accurately detect the many nuances of motion required to differentiate each trick. The game frequently misinterpreted my requests for complex pop shove-its as simple ollies or kickflips, a mistake that ended up being quite costly in many competitions. In the end, using the Wii remote adds a lot of frustration without adding much in the way of realism or engagement.

Which brings us to the Balance Board controls, the feature that's supposed to make Skate It more realistic and engaging than previous skateboarding games. At first blush, they seem to do just that -- the first time you actually press down your back heel to do a simple jumping ollie, or lean back slightly to hold a difficult manual, you're liable to think you're actually experiencing the future of videogames. The impressively direct connection between in-game actions and real-world movements replaces the frantic button-pressing of past skateboarding games with something that requires real physical coordination and an entirely new skill set.

Or so it seems at first. After that initial thrill of excitement, though, the day-to-day use of the Balance Board to control your skateboarder becomes a bit more troublesome. The first problem comes in trying to turn the board, which involves leaning back on your heels or forward on the balls of your feet. On a real skateboard, this sort of leaning causes the board to slide to the side underneath you, providing an automatic counterbalance to help you correct your stance. On the immobile Balance Board, though, there's nothing to compensate for your altered center of balance, making turns difficult to hold and even harder to reverse when you want to straighten out again. The end result is frustratingly imprecise turns that will make you wonder whether you weren't better off steering with the Wii remote.