I’ve never really understood the attraction to skating games. You basically spend all your time rolling around on a wheeled board and trying desperately not to launch into super-special amateur tricks like the one-eighty leg breaker, the three-sixty you’ll never walk again and of course, my personal favorite, the five-forty ultra ollie kickflip into a premature death by broken neck.
And so I approached Skate 2 on my Xbox 360 with a little bit of trepidation, as I knew it was going to involve a lot of rolling around on wheeled boards and trying desperately not to kill myself.
Skate 2 takes place about five years after a series of horrible catastrophes in Skate left your home city in ruins and apparently also sent you to jail (whoa, so much for “skateboarding is not a crime”, huh guys?). Now you’re out, but the city you left behind is not the same—five years will make a lot of changes to any town, especially one that’s just been hit by several disasters in a row. The evil corporation (and you know that there’s got to be one in a game about skateboarders somewhere, right?) MongoCorp has taken over the revitalization effort of the ruined city, converting it into the almost-recognizable New San Vanelona, often referred to throughout the game as New San Van. MongoCorp is willing to shell out these vast sums of cash to rebuild the city apparently so that it can institute a kind of martial law specifically targeting skateboarders, adding blocks to rails so they can’t be ground, and so on.
This is, of course, as ridiculous as stories get from a narrative sense—next month, watch for the Jenny Craig corporation to nuke and rebuild Brussels to make Belgian chocolate illegal—but the story isn’t exactly what we’re here for.
Now, I will freely admit that if you’re looking for a rail-grinding, box-crunching, trick-landing, air-grabbing good time, then indeed, Skate 2 is EXACTLY what you want. Even I had a good deal of fun riding around on my skateboard, finding places to do tricks, and soaring into randomness. I liked that the game put on a pretty nice simulation of speed and open-air movement on the board–I remember one crash where I’d apparently reached twenty-five miles an hour. I liked the whole “annals of meat” system that rewarded me for doing stuff that wouldn’t even make it to MTV’s Scarred for being too graphic. I liked the wide array of customization, and no doubt, those who enjoy skateboarding games are going to have a TOTAL blast with this game.
And if you liked the original, then you’re going to have a positive field day with the sequel. Most of the original stuff has been kept—you’ll recognize a lot of the tricks and gestures and boards and clothes and whatnot. The stuff that has been altered—mostly city landmarks—have been removed and replaced as would be expected according to the storyline. In fact, some of those landmarks have been left in place, but noticeably altered. I’ll admit, from a narrative sense their storyline is the worst kind of limping scrod but they stuck with it come hell or high water.
So basically, yes, if you’re a skater buff then you will go nuts over this game. Frankly, even if you’re not you’ll likely still get at least a little entertainment out of this, which is great. But if you’re not a skate buff, don’t expect much more than a rental’s worth of fun out of it.
Web 2.0 has officially hit the gaming industry, as Sucker Punch announced through 
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