- Publisher: EA
- Developer: EA Black Box
- ESRB Rating: “T" for Teen
- Genre: Skateboarding
- Pros: Fun gameplay with lots of tricks; new city to skate; lots of challenges; easier than Skate 2
- Cons: A.I. teammates suck; short, lifeless career mode; sections of city aren't connected; photo/video sharing is a "premium" service now
The career mode in Skate 3 has your character (storyline wise the same person from Skate 2, but you can still freely edit them to look however you want) arriving in a new city with the goal of starting your own skateboard company. In order to promote your boards, you have to take photos, shoot videos, win competitions, and more. This time around, you also get to form a team of skaters to also help represent your company.
The career mode is measured in the number of boards your company has sold. You can reach the final one-million sold benchmark in about 7 hours, at which point the career mode is essentially over and you can just skate around finishing any challenges you have left.
This makes the career mode feel kind of lifeless in that there isn't really any sort of tangible measurement of your growing success besides one measly number. Your skater basically jumped the shark. The team element also falls a little flat because the A.I. is generally pretty awful, and in team-based competitions you will often be severely handicapped by your teammates lackluster performances.
Gameplay
EA
The city of Port Carverton is a lot more laid back and skater-friendly place than San Vanelona was. There aren't any skate blocks soiling hot skate spots or security guards getting in your way. You are free to do what you want. Unfortunately, the city design isn't quite as nice as it was before. San Van had great lines all over the place and it was fun to skate all over. Port Carverton is more segmented out with bland bits of nothing really interesting to skate in between good spots. I'd say the skate spots themselves are better here, but the stuff in between isn't nearly as good. Another slight issue is that the city isn't entirely connected like before. There are three distinct large city areas along with some smaller parks that aren't connected to each other. Instead you just teleport to locations and challenges via the menu. Exploration and just goofing off isn't nearly as rewarding as it used to be.
While the career mode stumbles a bit (it is still fun, don't get me wrong), playing online with friends is still awesome. Finding lines and skate spots and just mindlessly sessioning with your friends will always be more fun than skating around by yourself. The team aspect from the career also carries over into online play, but human teammates will rarely let you down the way the A.I. does.
Park Building
Another great feature in Skate 3 is the ability to easily build custom skate parks (and you can actually bring up a menu to customize any area you're skating in during career, which is awesome) and share them online with friends. This brings up one final issue we have with the game, however, and that is the fact that video/photo/park sharing is sectioned off as "premium content" here.
Skate Share Pack
Similar to the Cerberus Network in Mass Effect 2 or the "VIP" status for Battlefield Bad Company 2 that had to be activated with a card included with new copies of the game, Skate 3 ships with a "Skate Share Pack" that lets you share photos/videos/skate parks online and will eventually offer free DLC. If you buy the game used and want to use these features, it will cost you $10. I hate this. Rewarding new game buyers with free DLC is one thing, but taking away some of the best features of previous games in the series is going overboard. The kicker is that not only can you not upload your own stuff, but you can't see/use any content from other players either. Unacceptable.
EA
Graphically, Skate 3 is nice and clean looking. The city is great looking, and depending on the lighting looks pretty darn realistic. The skaters are all nicely detailed and well animated. It isn't a huge graphical leap over Skate 2, but that game looked good to start with so no complaints here.
Sound
Skate 3 also sounds good as well. Sound effects have always been a strong point of the series, and that is no different here. The soundtrack is filled with tons of great tunes to skate to, but using custom soundtracks is always an option on Xbox 360.
Bottom Line
In many ways, Skate 3 is easily the best of the series. It has the best gameplay and much more reasonable career mode goals, and the other features like online play and the park editor are excellent. But in other ways like city design, the career mode story, and team focus, this entry doesn't stack up quite as well to previous games. It is still a ton of fun and one of the best skateboarding games ever, but something just seems off. I'm also not at all a fan of the way the photo/video/park sharing has been changed into premium content. In the end, however, I look at Skate 3 like this. If you have never played a Skate game before, this is a great place to start and I highly recommend it. If you played a lot of Skate 2, Skate 3 might feel like a bit of a downgrade and I'd rent it first. It is certainly better technically, but Skate 3 has lost some of the heart and attitude of its predecessors, which is really what skateboarding is supposed to be about anyway.
