There’s a clumsy phenomenon that occurs with this job every so often: you may play one thing for a bit pre-release, not really feel it in any respect, after which see a bunch of your revered friends begin lauding it with reward. You anticipated this recreation to come back and go along with minimal chatter, however now folks you understand and belief are assuring you it’s value seeing via. That’s what occurred to me with Skate Story, a recreation I (maybe dismissively) stated “could have been a screensaver” and I’d have preferred it extra. However hey, I’m not so closed-minded that I’m not open to being improper.
The roughly 60 minutes I put into Skate Story was admittedly a delight to the senses, more often than not. Its glassy, minimalist artwork model is attractive, and skating via its environments, bedazzled in beautiful blue and purple contrasts, gave me the identical wistful feeling I get when strolling via a metropolis at night time. In the meantime, the sport’s atmospheric, digital temper music by the pop group Blood Cultures captures its ever-shifting tone, with some ranges feeling like a comforting skate via a starlit night and others like a extra hectic, beat-driven impediment course.
To say that Skate Story is a vibe is such an understatement that it doesn’t fairly seize how artfully its disparate items come collectively. Each rail you grind and ramp you ascend is accompanied by a pleasant, evocative earworm. All of it helps construct upon the ethereal nature of its world, and the existential menace on the middle of its minimalist story. You’re a demon who’s made a deal to get out of your horrible destiny of residing as an simply shattered glass creature by devouring moons, and to achieve them, you have to skate. However like I stated, you’re product of glass, so the slightest grazing of a tough floor when you’ve gained some actual momentum in your board will shatter you.
Skate Story is stuffed with character, with so many weirdos saying loopy shit to you as you skate via this world. Their feedback are generally humorous, generally profound, however all of it reminds you that you have to skate to flee this lovely nightmare. It exudes an virtually Suda51-style irreverence that, when juxtaposed towards the seriousness it generally delves into, appears like an extension of that back-and-forth between skating as one thing meditative and one thing hardcore.
That is the form of centered inventive piece that reminds you that individuals make video games, and that permitting them to execute on a particular imaginative and prescient is the way you get one thing particular. Skate Story is a shocking marriage of various artwork types, all studying from the identical web page. I like watching it…however enjoying it?
Skate Story is tough, however not for the explanations you’d anticipate. Sure, your glass physique signifies that you’re one mild faucet away from shattering everywhere in the floor, however for me, the problem got here from preventing with a management scheme that felt tailored to verify I hit each impediment on the best way.
Skate Story’s early ranges are hallways with spikes, poles, and different issues designed to get in the best way as you velocity alongside in your skateboard. In my early time with it, I discovered its overly difficult management scheme made it tougher to react as I approached obstructions. The sport retains the digital camera at your again, so that you’re basically steering side-to-side on rails as you velocity up, decelerate, and leap over obstacles. Its digital camera follows your glass demon’s motion so exactly that your complete orientation shifts on the slightest flip, and it’s disorienting making an attempt to make even probably the most minute adjustments to your motion at that time.
These hallway-like ranges are additionally an issue if you’re pressured to make a sudden flip, which, so far as I’ve gotten, Skate Story doesn’t offer you a way to do with out virtually halting and dropping all momentum, and it’s not helped by the terrible sound of your board scraping towards the glass over the in any other case delectable soundscape.
Perhaps I would like to present Skate Story one other probability, however the best way the expertise of enjoying it grinds towards every part I actually admire in regards to the recreation was sufficient to make me need to discover one thing else to do with my time. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack the complete time I’ve been scripting this, and though I solely spent a fleeting second with Skate Story, photos of skating down its impediment programs nonetheless fill my thoughts. It’s made an impression, each good and unhealthy. In scripting this, I feel I may need coerced myself into seeing which of these emotions pans out by the top.
