Skate 3 (Sony Playstation 3, 2010)

Skate 3 has a lot of new online features that feel like they were built to cater to the series' most fanatical supporters. Things like teams and the new online challenge system are things that will keep fans of the series engaged for months to come. At the same time, most of the game's career mode challenges are much easier when compared to the past games in the series. Things like playing games of S-K-A-T-E and forcing you to do extremely specific tricks are practically gone from the game, at least until you set out to start "killing" the game's challenges by performing more than the bare minimum. The whole game feels like a big funnel, designed to get players onto Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, where they can mix it up in a ton of different ways. But that funnel has left the game's story and career feeling stripped and more insignificant than previous Skate career modes. The gameplay is as sharp as ever, but depending on what keeps you coming back to the series, you might not be as thrilled with the direction in which the series is headed.

Like Skate 2 before it, Skate 3 opens with a huge accident that leaves your skater horrifically mauled, justifying the game's create-a-skater while still essentially putting you in the shoes of the same skater from the previous game. This time around, you're trying to start your own skateboard company, and each goal you complete translates directly into board sales. There's still a flashy, well-produced live-action intro sequence, but once the company premise is established, there isn't really much of a story. The game gives you sales targets, you meet those targets by completing challenges, which opens up more challenges. Once you hit 1,000,000 board sales, the career is effectively complete, though you'll probably have plenty of goals left to try by that point. It took me around seven hours to sell a million boards. Along with setting up the company, you'll also form a skate team, ostensibly to further promote your line of skateboards. As you hit sales milestones, you'll customize more skaters for your team, and some of the goals have you skating as these guys for billboard photos and the ever-present team video.

For the most part, Skate 3 performs well and maintains a solid framerate. But it's also a much cleaner-looking game than its predecessors, at least by default. From the outset, Skate 2 defaulted to a low, realistic camera angle with a fisheye lens that made the entire game look like a filthy skate video. You can build terrific skate parks and share them online.

Though the career mode itself isn't especially thrilling on its own, the online focus makes everything in Skate 3 feel like a bigger deal, if you've even dabbled in the online world of Skate 2, you'll surely enjoy what Skate 3 has to offer.

All in all, "owning" the goals is way, way easier than it has been in the past. If you want to get trickier, you can attempt to "kill" most of the game's goals. The criteria for killing a goal gets way more specific than the owning instructions, and this is where you'll have to be able to pull off blunt slides and other specific tricks to proceed. Even these feel a bit easier. If you've been banging your head against the past two Skate games, you might find that the game is a bit too easy now, but it really feels well-tuned and designed to make sure that you're always making progress.

The words "updated yearly" are scary for diehard fans of any series to hear. Yearly updates translate into less development time on the features that blow everyone's mind and more time spent applying incremental improvements across several smaller, less substantive areas of the game. Skate 3 has fallen victim to the symptoms of a yearly update with small improvements that are devoid of any one feature for the game to hang its hat on. For newbies to the series, I'd say this is the one to purchase, because there's a ton of cool skateboarding to be had, but if you took the plunge on the first two Skates, you might want to wait for the next iteration.

Skate 3 tries to give players a sense of camaraderie with both AI and real human players that can join up on your skating team. The point of Skate 3's career mode is to build a new skateboard brand from scratch and your pals eventually sign on to help you out (though the actual story ultimately carries little weight). To get them to join up, you'll need to get notoriety. Once you attain a high enough level of street cred with the masses (tracked through a sales chart of sorts), you'll get your first teammate. You can customize your mates just as easily as your own skateboarder with merchandise, different decks, wheels and everything else you can think of. What's even cooler, if a friend on your friends list has created a skateboarder in Skate 3, you can use their character model on your team. No uploading needed on their part.

the game has a skate school so you cna learn the basic moves.the game also has unique districts,skate parks and plazas.sometimes durning play at first it takes a long time to master a move or trick.when you do it seems rather rewarding.it was to me anyways.controlling the charecter this time around is a bit easier then previous games,which makes it fun to me.The best skateboarding game you can buy. A good game in its own right, and a worthy sequel for all its worth. Deeper online integration, new modes, and various improvements and tweaks from Skate 2.there is alot to do in the game and the game keeps you coming back.i think the game was put together rather nicely and is a much needed game for collectors.if you have previous skate games then try to get this game while it is on sale though.

I JUST GOT THE GAME.............ITS AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!but dont play another skating after you order this on ebay or-else you will get board quick..........
cons......
you start off the game with every location & because of that, it wont seem like a challenge

overall rating- 45/10

The game itself is great. Starts out very chill so you can learn the basics and progress your style. Create custom characters, decks, parks etc. like every other skate game.. You can move benches and rails around when you get off the board so you can create your own lines. One of the best parts of the game is the overall realistic-ness, tricks are easy yet difficult to say the least and when you crash its not always the same motions, instead the hall-of-meat stunts are included so you can make it seem like the character is having a seizure or whatever you would like.. Basically if you are reading reviews about the game, you are inquiring about purchasing it so just do it with no regrets, it's a great game with hours and hours of gameplay..