REVIEW : Skater XL (XBOX Series X)
Skateboard aficionados have been orphaned for 10 years. After 3 episodes very appreciated by the press and the players, the Skate license disappears from the radar and the skateboard game is discreet. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater tries several returns, but the overall quality of the titles and their decidedly more arcade approach in the controls and the game philosophy leaves a bitter taste in the mouth for fans of the “simulation” of EA. The gloomy landscape of the genre finally brightens up after the announcement of a fourth episode of Skateboard and several early accesses intending to take up the torch. Skater XL is one of them.
Our first seconds with Skater XL were difficult, to say the least. Once a key is pressed, our PS4 Pro laboriously loads our first spot. After a functional tutorial not encumbering any scenario or an interlocutor to guide us, we let go in a Californian high school as we often saw in the best of VHS in the late 90s / early 2000. The first shock, and certainly the most violent, is mainly related to the technique of Skater XL. The school is desperately empty, the textures are crude and the clipping is regular despite the relatively small size of the playing area. The aesthetics are rudimentary and despite this observation, the framerate drops regularly, sometimes going to freeze. To put it simply, even on PlayStation 4 Pro, Skater XL is ugly, unstable, and poorly optimized. Unfortunately, we cannot comment on the other versions of the title. This is all the more problematic since very little is displayed on the screen. This lack of optimization is striking and reveals one of the biggest problems of the title, it still needs a lot of work. In some ways, Skater XL looks a lot more like a prototype or an alpha than a finished game. This is not necessarily harmful in the context of an early access title that will evolve, but it is much more so in the case of a console game sold in a box for around forty euros.
There is something to be astounded by the technical state of the game, especially since most of the available cards suffer from the same observation.
THE REVELATION
In terms of controls, Skater XL pushes the “simulation” knob further than most titles before it. Each foot is assigned to a stick while turns and aerial rotations are performed by maintaining L2 or R2 depending on the desired direction. Gymnastics is quite complex for anyone who has accumulated hundreds of hours on the EA series. Our psychomotricity is sometimes put to the test during advanced figures, requiring us to perform movements on both sticks simultaneously while holding and releasing the appropriate trigger. We quickly realize the relevance of this handling, demanding at first, which allows the player to constantly keep control of the feet, and therefore the board, of his avatar. This diagram might sound like an unnecessarily complicated gimmick for anyone from Skateboarding.
Indeed, no trick is pre-recorded, each movement is the impact of the stick movement, and therefore of the foot, that you apply on the board. For connoisseurs, the system is reminiscent of Tony Hawk’s Project 8’s Nail the Trick. It is, therefore, possible to perform quite incredible variations of tricks. With this freedom and this depth of play, also comes a certain difficulty. Here, no magnetism of the board on the rails during a grind for example. It’s up to you to finely adjust your sticks to place the board in the ideal angle. The same goes for the reception which requires micro-movements of the stick to be able to start again in the right direction.
AN XLENTE BASE, A DEPLORABLE FINISH
Ultimately the foundations of Skater XL are excellent. What is wrong is everything else. Character creation is rudimentary and offers very little customization equipment. The soundtrack is quality and includes music from bands such as Band of Horses and Interpol. However, the playlist does not last more than an hour and is constantly played in the same order. There is also no question of playing a song. The menus are archaic and cause big slowdowns. Switching characters too quickly got us two crashes and endless loading. No multiplayer mode is available. Mods available on the computer are not available on the console. It is not possible to place obstacles like in Session. The physics engine leaves much to be desired, which makes the falls limp and ridiculous. Collision bugs are frequent … For each card, a list of challenges is available. These represent the only content of the game and challenge players to execute predefined lines. Halfway between the tutorial and the challenge, these challenges serve above all as an appetizer and an example before the player puts his creativity to good use. They also allow you to offer well-placed spawn points to try your combinations. However, we can regret the absence of any form of online compatibility. Creating your challenges and sharing them with friends or strangers would be a good way to create content for a title that is stingy with them. Also, each time a challenge is launched, the framerate drops as the environment loads into the memory of the console, making the first attempt systematically jerky and therefore very unpleasant.
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