Review #049 – Skate Story

Presentation-wise, Skate Story’s eccentric art and expressive soundtrack give off some really cool, intriguingly eerie ambience. It’s more about experiencing the oftentimes absurd scenarios than simply chasing high scores. I can’t deny that the game is—viewed strictly as an art piece—pretty awesome. However, I do wish the skateboarding itself, the game’s primary gameplay mechanic, was as good as looking and/or listening to it.

My biggest issue is with the button layout—to me the controls feel unintuitive, with circle (on PlayStation) being the ollie button while you hold the triggers in different combinations to activate tricks. I find my Pro Skater-coded brain fumbling around and crashing more often than landing rad trick combos.

I don’t like the grinding mechanic either—you essentially have to line up your ollies perfectly to a ledge, but it’s super unreliable and would’ve benefitted greatly from a dedicated Tony Hawk-like button. It’s clearly not trying to replicate realistic skateboarding so why is grinding an exception? It’s stuff like this that really halted my enjoyment on what is otherwise a great audiovisual showpiece.