So if you have been on IRC lately you’ve probably heard me talking about how addicted to skate I am. If you enjoy skateboarding in any fashion, videos, X-Games, getting out there and shredding it up yourself, you will be a fan.

The first thing everyone thinks is, is it better than Tony Hawk? Well, there are two different ends of the video skating game spectrum now. It is like comparing Burnout to Forza. You have your sim and your arcade. They are both good.

What makes skate unique is it all physics based. If you want to grind a rail, you need to line it up, jump to the correct height, and get your board to land on the rail. There’s no more grind button. Also setting it apart from Tony Hawk is flickit controls. Instead of ollieing in the air, then pressing a button combination to perform a flip trick, you bring back the right stick and then flick the stick to do a trick. Here is a breakdown of the flickit controls.

It has a really nice replay editor and you will be able to upload videos to the web right from the game, this feature is being called skate.Reel. Reel is going to tie into your friends list to make sharing your media in game with your buddies very easy. Right now, like most things EA it is very buggy, and was the reason for the demos delay. Some people have it working, and can link you right to their reel footage on EA’s site, unfortunately I am not one of those people. So you will have to venture to youtube to see my first day with the skate demo footage or follow the link below.

More info:

• warning’s skate demo videos
• Skate City overview
• Controls video
• X-Games street course
• Forum thread