Skate Story Review – Hellish premise aside, this is skateboarding heaven | games

SKateboarding video games live and die by their atmosphere. The original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games were chaotic and fun, while the recent return of EA’s beloved Skate series delivered a competent and jarring corporate realism. The work of mostly solo developer Sam Eng, Skate Story offers a more impressionistic interpretation while capturing something of the essential spirit of the sport. It transports the process of ascension into a demonic underworld where the aesthetic is less fire and brimstone than the glittering vaporwave of the 2000s. It’s also the most emotionally real a skateboarding game has ever felt.

The premise is ingenious: You are a demon made of “pain and glass.” Skate to the moon and swallow it, says the devil, and you will be free. This is exactly what you do. You first learn how to use the ollie, a “subtle and subtle trick” according to the game’s brilliantly written text. Then come bobs, kicks, heels, and more.

Easy controls: one button to ollie. If you hold down the shoulder button at the same time, you perform a more complicated trick. Aside from the charming visuals, what’s most striking is the wonderful smoothness and delicious “game feel” of the actual skating: the way this shiny demon’s knees bend just the right amount after executing a trick; The way you can see their foot extending across the top end of the board in order to apply the appropriate force that will cause it to flip over.

The vaporwave aesthetic isn’t Skate Story’s only bold design choice. You’ll fall several times onto the apocalyptic asphalt, and when you make a move, you’re transitioned into first-person perspective, letting you watch the world crumble for what seems like a torturous eternity. Along the way, she meets a strange cast of characters: a mysterious rabbit, a dove trying to write a screenplay, and a ghost loitering in a laundry room.

The game’s events can be divided into two types: narrow linear tunnels through which you rush at breakneck speed, and wide open sandbox levels. The former are furious, momentum-packed thrill rides that require the utmost precision; The latter, set in nightmarish visions of New York, features several offbeat objectives, such as a creepy laundry chase. At these levels, there’s plenty of room to enjoy the tricky mechanics of deep skating.

Gradually, sadness appears in this crystal universe. Of course, the skateboarder wants to be freed from the underworld, but he also seems thrilled at the idea of ​​devouring these moons. As you connect tricks with clues and grinds, and record ever-larger sets, all with the brilliantly downbeat electro soundtrack harmonizing, questions arise. Why is this skater so hungry? Why do they seek pain? In some ways, we are reminded of the physical dangers of skiing in real life.

These questions — and the sadness buried in their answers — set Skate Story apart from its traditional video game counterparts. Instead, Ng’s tender, emotional work is more in touch with the likes of the acclaimed documentary Minding the Gap and Jonah Hill’s Mid90s .

The result is a ski with rare hair. There is the poetry of skiing itself, the miraculous interplay between body and board delivered with aplomb. There is actual poetry that accompanies the end of each level. Finally, there are the tender emotions that break, seeming to swell with every jump in this surreal, shimmering hellscape.