SKATER XL

All of the grinding, but none of the random battles

- Luke Kemp

More flips than a hyperactive acrobat. More ollies than a Murs lookalike contest. More big air than a 1980s metal band. It must be a new skateboarding game! Such a release is extreme-sports-level brave with the classic Tony Hawk’s remasters on the horizon, but this one aims to differentiate itself from those beloved titles with a unique control system – an aim that it very much achieves.

You push off with q or r, but after that, you’ve got a whole new way of controlling your skater to learn. The big draw is that the left stick controls your left foot, and the right one (you guessed it) controls your right foot. Performing tricks relies (almost) entirely on manipulation of the analogue sticks. If controlling each foot individually sounds needlessly complicated or difficult, don’t worry, it isn’t.

One concern we had was that we might find ourselves tumbling embarrassingly from the board before we even managed to begin performing a trick. The truth is, this isn’t really any more or less likely to happen than in any other skateboarding game you may have played. Oddly, perhaps, it’s not possible for your skater to intentionally leave the board which, combined with the respawns after each and every crash, gives the impression of some poor soul damned to roam the world on a skateboard for all eternity. We wonder what dark deeds they performed to earn such a fate.