REVIEW : SKATER XL (PC)
It’s been 10 long years since the gaming landscape has been blessed with a high-profile skateboard game and developer Easy Day Studios looks to fill that void with Skater XL. The skate title aims to bring the sport back to the video game spotlight via an innovative and fun control scheme that ditches programmed tricks for a unique, physics-based control setup. This PC game gives you the freedom to explore moves similar to a real-world skateboard session, but that’s about it. Skater XL is less a game and more a skateboarding sandbox; there are no high scores or HORSE games here. If you’re fine with simply mastering tricks and levels, Skater XL may prove a compelling purchase, but be aware that the game has some rough edges.
Skater XL is designed with a standard console game controller in mind, as the action involves deftly manipulating dual analogue sticks. The left stick controls your character’s left foot, while the right stick controls its right foot. As you accelerate through the game, you use stick combinations to bust out tricks. Easy Day Studios’ physics-based skate engine, lacks canned tricks. Instead, the game’s moves are all based on your character’s movement speed and foot positioning.
For example, flicking the right stick down and then up triggers an ollie that lets you clear low-lying objects or hop toward a grind-worthy ledge. Using both sticks in the same fashion causes you to do a stronger ollie that launches you higher in the air, though not unrealistically so. The game leans heavily toward this intuitive control scheme, one that lets you bust out kickflips, manuals, and backsides with practice.
Skater XL has expanded quite a bit since its days as a Steam Early Access title. A few months ago, it felt incomplete; at version 1.0, there’s a lot more to experience. For example, the phat beat that played during the beta was the only in-game music. Now, Skater XL has an energetic, youth-oriented soundtrack that features Animal Collective, Band of Horses, Getter, Interpol, and Modest Mouse to get you appropriately hyped.
Likewise, the skating locales have grown from just two to eight. They include the developer-created California Skatepark, Downtown Los Angeles, The Big Ramp, Easy Day High School, and West L.A. Courthouse, as well as the community-created Grant Park, Hedland, and Streets. Sadly, these maps are devoid of any other in-game character besides your skater, which gives the game a lifeless vibe. Worse, sometimes your skater will clip through the ground or a building, giving the game an amateurish feel.
Like any other sport, skateboarding has its share of professionals, so Skater XL includes a handful. The licensed pro roster isn’t large, but it lets you skate as Tiago Lemos, Evan Smith, Tom Asta, and Brandon Westgate.
If the four licensed characters aren’t to your liking, Skater XL lets you create your own. The options, however, are quite limited. You can select skin and hair, board parts, and clothing, but the male and female character models have one face and body type each. That’s inexcusable.
Skater XL includes several cool in-game features, too. Recording lines is a big part of skateboard culture, so Skater XL includes that as an in-game feature. The game’s replay editor lets you playback lines and views them from multiple angles. It’s like making your own skate tapes.
The game includes a map pin, too, which lets you create a new starting point. That doesn’t sound very exciting on the face of it, but if you wipe out on the far side of a map while grinding a handrail, you don’t want to return to the original starting point and skate all the way back over to try again. Instead, you can drop a pin when you find an interesting area so that you start fresh in that area. It’s a great touch that comes in handy when you’re practising moves.
Your PC doesn’t need cutting-edges system specs for you to the manual, revert, and power slide. According to Skater XL’s Steam page, your gaming desktop or gaming laptop needs at least a 2.5GHz dual-core Intel i5 processor, Nvidia GeForce GTX 950 GPU, 8GB of RAM, 5GB of available disk space, and the Windows 7 operating system.
In terms of input devices, Skater XL supports Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation 4 controllers. There are no keyboard controls as the game relies on dual analogue sticks to control footwork.
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