I sat down at Nintendo’s Redwood City office to get a good look at the single-player mode for myself (since all I had to go on were Nintendo Power previews and Stephen Totilo’s experience) before diving into the multiplayer mode. I was given a choice: I could replay the same demo Nintendo Power and Totilo had already covered, or I could be one of the first to see the second dungeon in the game – the Snow Temple.

What kind of correspondent would I be if I didn’t go for the latter? A copycat, that’s what!

What Is It?
The Snow Temple was described to me as the “second” dungeon in the game once Zelda and Link are sent to the Tower of Spirits to restore the Spirit Tracks of Hyrule. The level began outside the snow-covered structure with the train parked out front and Zelda hovering beside Link.

What We Saw
The temple had about three floors and judging from the main room that requires puzzle solving, I’d say I completed three quarters of it before having to stop to play some multiplayer.

How Far Along Is It?
The game comes out December 7. I was playing on a normal-sized cartridge that could well be a final version of the game.

What Needs Improvement?
My Snow Temple For An Item-Toggling Button: Link started this dungeon with the Whirlwind item and earned the Boomerang about halfway through. To use an item, you’ve got to select it from a menu so that it appears in an icon in the upper right-hand side of the lower screen. Tapping that icon activates the item and then you do whatever is required of you to use it (blow in the mic for the Whirlwind, draw a path on the screen for the Boomerang). There came a point in this dungeon where you had to use the boomerang to create a path of ice over water (by crossing its path through an ice torch and back across the water) – and then quickly change to the Whirlwind to activate a switch out in the middle of the water. Because the ice path melts quickly, your timing has to be spot on and it can get pretty fiddly when you’re trying to bust out the Whirlwind, aim it and THEN blow into the mic. I died at least twice, wishing in vain that a tap of the shoulder button would switch between items.

Dude, Where’s My Zelda? As soon as I set foot in the Snow Temple, Zelda shrank and faded away with a sigh. It turns out she can’t go with you or help you within the Temples and you can’t talk to her for advice the way you could with other companion characters in other Zelda games. This turned Spirit Tracks into an experience that was an awful lot like Phantom Hourglass. Phantom Hourglass was good, so that’s not an automatic minus – but I think people were expecting the all-new Zelda gameplay to be a consistent feature instead of an area-specific thing.

What Should Stay The Same?
Shallow Learning Curve: Truthfully, I never beat The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and it’s been ages since I’ve touched it. But it really didn’t take long to master the stylus-only controls and the menus weren’t at all difficult to navigate and interpret. People who missed out on Phantom Hourglass are going to be just fine adjusting to Spirit Tracks.

Sure Rings My Bell: The entire temple was based on moving three bells into a main room together so that Link could trigger them in a sequence to open a door. This objective was communicated entirely through visuals (little panels with bells on different note lines, panels on the floor, etc) and all of the puzzles were familiar slide-the-block, clear-the-room-of-monsters affairs that I know and love in Zelda games. I got so caught up in the familiar, simple gameplay, I didn’t mind dying twice and getting stuck three different times.

Final Thoughts
Despite not having beaten Phantom Hourglass and not really liking The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (yeah, I said it – you wanna fight?!), playing Spirit Tracks felt like coming home. That’s probably the best feeling I could ask for from a game, especially so close to the holidays when I long for that feeling and have all this extra time to play games.

But anyway, Spirit Tracks has multiplayer. Boy does it ever have multiplayer, and boy did we ever play it. Here’s what we liked:

What Is It?
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks’ multiplayer mode is akin to The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures for the GameCube — four people each control one colour-coded Link and move around the same map as the other Links. The difference in Spirit Tracks is that instead of trying to help each other, you’re racing each other to collect Power Gems and trying to royally screw each other up on the way.

Note: It’s local-only.

What We Saw
I played two matches against a developer and two publicists at Nintendo’s Redwood City office after finally getting my hands on the single-player mode.

How Far Along Is It?
Spirit Tracks is out December 7. I was playing on a normal-sized cartridge that may have been a final version.

What Needs Improvement?
Little Bit Laggy: When dashing around the dungeon map, things start off steady and the Power Gem drops are few and far between. As the match picks up pace, however, and players start falling into traps or getting sliced up the Phantoms, huge amounts of Gems will suddenly spill out onto the map. That plus all four players frantically running to that point to scavenge Gems caused a couple of super-laggy moments in an otherwise smooth experience.

Trap Door Confusion: There are trap doors in every map that are either random or triggered by switches. I honestly couldn’t tell you which, though, because sometimes I’d press a switch and a trap door would open and sometimes the door seemed to open and shut in a kind of rhythm. It was confusing — and that much more frustrating when I fell into one because I didn’t know if I should blame somebody for it.

What Should Stay The Same?
Spreading The Phantom: Numerous Phantoms — those big guys in helmets from the last Zelda DS game, Phantom Hourglass — wander the maps, prowling for Links. When one spots you, a little icon pops up above your head, indicating that it’s got a bead on you. If you fail to run for your life, the Phantom will speed toward you and cut you – costing you precious Power Gems and precious seconds as you scramble to get up and recover them before the other players get there. The fun part about this mechanic is the bit where you can pass the Phantom’s bead onto other players you run by — like spreading Chlamydia. It’s amusing.

The Invisible Zone: One map we tried out had a patch of water in the centre that rendered players invisible when they ran in. You could still see ripples where their feet landed in the water — and if you look closely, the ripples are colour-coded like the Links — but with all four players running around in there and Phantoms bearing down on one or more of them, it was blind panic. And freaking awesome.

Mario Kart-style Pick-ups: Occasionally, an orb with a question mark on it will fall from the sky. Players that snag this pick-up are treated to several things like a random Gem drop, invisibility or a lightning strike that you can inflict on other players. It keeps things interesting and can be the salve to the wound of a player who just went from 51 Gems to two after a string of Phantom infections.

Single Cartridge Play: I am so happy that it doesn’t require four people to actually buy the game to enjoy this mode.

Final Thoughts
The multiplayer mode in Spirit Tracks certainly isn’t the main attractions of the game — but it’s a solid addition that deserves to be played if you can tear yourself away from trains and princesses for a little while.

Monster Hunter Tri, however, is going for a different audience with its exclusive Wii release. By streamlining the Wii friend code process and adding features other multiplayer games rely on — such as a chat window — Tri is trying to jump start the online ecosystem that’s already built into the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

But how does that impact that actual monster hunting?

What Is It?
Monster Hunter Tri is a multiplayer adventure game where up to four players can team up to hunt down monsters. The game skips over friend codes, instead using a lobby system where you can easily find other players and send friend requests. Additionally, there’s a chat window in-game that can be accessed with a USB keyboard if you don’t feel like pointing and clicking. Currently, Wii Speak is not in the game — but Capcom is “looking into it”.

There’s also a singleplayer mode built into the game, but details on it are scarce.

What We Saw
I played three missions during the University event using both the Wii Remote/Nunchuck configuration and the Classic Controller Pro because they had one handy.

Note: It’s unconfirmed if the Classic Controller Pro will be brought to the US along with Monster Hunter Tri.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is due out early 2010. I didn’t notice any major show-stopping bugs — but I was sad to see that the Wii was hooked up to computer monitors which have a nasty reputation of making even very good Wii graphics look fugly. So I can’t speak to the graphics which are apparently supposed to be pretty.

What Needs Improvement?
There’s No Lock On: Normally, this doesn’t matter in Monster Hunter because you pan the camera toward a monster, press attack and bam! You’ve hit it. However, Tri introduces underwater combat where the monsters can change depth quickly during a fight. Panning the camera a la ground combat under water takes a little extra work and can be totally disorienting. So, yeah, a lock-on would be preferable.

At Tiddy Bit Fiddly: On the Classic Controller Pro, I had a lot of problems getting the Bowgun to aim right. Not only do you have to have the weapon out and cocked before you can attack — you also have to choose between shooting from the hip or going into sniper mode with a targeting reticule. Given that battles move very quickly and monsters can charge across a field right at you while you’re reloading and re-cocking, it would be nice if the button controls for un-slinging, cocking and aiming your Bowgun were perhaps a little streamlined. Or if there were a Panicked Dodge button that would snap you out of sniper mode at the last second.

Constant Loads: Every time you leave an area of a map — which you will, because the monsters move around — you’ve got to endure a loading screen. It gets tedious.

What Should Stay The Same?
Wow, It’s Multiplayer! I’m not used to more than two people in my multiplayer on the Wii, so I was excited to see four people in the same place, attacking the same thing with no lag — on the Wii! If Monster Hunter Tri can work things out such that people actually buy this game and play it, it’s going to be a lot of fun team up with people and make new friends among strangers the way I would on other consoles.

Swimming Is Fun: Once you get the hang of the quick-swim button and the dive button, moving around underwater feels pretty pleasant. I kind of wonder how the lancer doesn’t drown under the weight of her weapon, though…

Final Thoughts
Two things will probably make or break this game: Wii Speak and pay-to-play subscriptions. In Japan, they don’t have the former, but they do have the latter — and a long history of loving Monster Hunter. Here, we’re sad because there are only like two games that use Wii Speak and I really don’t think we’d stand for a subscription Wii game no matter how awesome it might be. Also, we’re not as fond of or familiar with Monster Hunter — but with any luck and a little attention to these two make-or-breaks, Capcom could be changing that.

But that’s just hearsay from an overzealous witness violating spousal privilege*. Here’s the real testimony regarding Ace Attorney’s transition to WiiWare.

*Yes, I would totally marry that game if such a thing were possible.

What Is It?
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was a crazy-popular adventure crime-solving game for the DS in 2005 where players gather evidence to present at trial to convict criminals. Now it’s being ported to the Wii via WiiWare in all its investigative glory.

What We Saw
I played through a segment late in the trial where the murderer in on the stand spouting lies for Phoenix to rip apart.

How Far Along Is It?
It’s a straight port with no fancy extras or overhauled graphics, so consider the game done. Ace Attorney hits the United States in January with Justice for All and Trials & Tribulations following in March and May respectively. The bonus fourth episode will also drop in May for an as-yet unspecified low price.

What Needs Improvement?
Annoying Background: Observe the screen and note that little grey border with the Phoenix Wright logo on it. Now imagine that background is actually moving gradually to the upper left hand corner of the screen throughout gameplay. Yeah, kind of distracting, isn’t it?

What Should Stay The Same?
OBJECTION!!! The most amazing thing that’s been done to Phoenix Wright on WiiWare is adding motion controls — or rather, motion control, because there’s only one. It comes when you want to throw an objection out during witness testimony. Now, you could just open up your evidence file and press A to select evidence and then A again to present — or you could press to select and then fling your hand outward a la Phoenix himself to trigger OBJECTION! Which do you think is cooler?

Final Thoughts
Capcom is really supportive of WiiWare between this and Mega Man 9. As long as they don’t jack up prices or chop up individual Phoenix Wright games into tiny episodes (which is almost the same thing as jacking up prices), I support the decision to port awesome DS games to WiiWare.

This preview is adjourned. *Thumps gavel*

Not that there’s anything wrong with the sandbox third-person shooter/action game label; it certainly does sum up both Just Cause 2 and its 2006 predecessor. But with sequels, you’re expecting something more, right? Well, Just Cause 2 delivers — in parachute and grappling hook form.

What Is It?
Just Cause 2 puts players in the shoes of Agency operative Rico Rodriguez who is sent to track down his AWOL friend and mentor, Tom Sheldon on the fictional island of Panau. Along the way, he gets enmeshed in conflicts between three different factions and there are a lot of high places that are just begging to be BASE-jumped off of.

What We Saw
I watched a developer recap the demo shown at E3 where Rico BASE jumps into a speedboat and then goes crazy grappling between points on what looks like a shipping port. Then the dev took me and several other games journalists through the beginning of the Casino Bust mission before handing over the controller so I could try my hand at playing in the sandbox.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is due out sometime in 2010, but it looks pretty enough to seem like the release could be sooner rather than later.

What Needs Improvement?
Wait, What Was I Doing? It’s awfully easy to get distracted by the pretty scenery and raw freedom offered up by Just Cause 2. You do get map notifications of where you can go to complete the next objective on whatever question you might be on — and sometimes mobile phone updates from non-playable characters who want you to do something. But the map is easy to ignore since you have to open a menu to view it properly. Also the mobile phone pep talks are jarring enough to be irritating, so you might tune them out. It’d be nice if the game sent your PDA unobtrusive text messages or something.

Where Am I? Panau feels huge. I’m not sure how it stacks up compared to the first game, but the square mileage of the island is supposed to be something like 400 square miles (1035sq km). With all the ground to cover and topography that makes it hard to scan for landmarks, it’s easy to get lost. You might not mind it much if you’re an intrepid explorer — but if you’re one of those gotta-beat-main-story-now types, getting lost while trying to learn the lay of the land is going to be a huge drag.

You Can’t Grapple Two Elevators Together: Bummer.

The Malaysian Faction Boss Is Annoying: I might catch heat from both feminists and Malaysian people when I say that I can’t stand the Malaysian faction boss lady. But seriously, she’s irritating — especially when she’s constantly yelling at you during a mission in heavily accented English.

What Should Stay The Same?
I Want To Have The Grapple’s Babies: It is so fun to grapple onto things, grapple things together or just grapple yourself to the ground then deploy the parachute while you’re being pulled toward said grapple point to launch yourself into the air for what’s basically the Spider-Man mode of transportation. The best part of the demo was when the developer grappled a truck that was pursuing him to the underside of a bridge as they passed by. The physics of watching the wire snap taut and the truck flip up and over were hilarious. Also, you can grapple cars and boats to helicopters. Oh, and you can keep your airborne momentum up when you’re parachuting by grappling onto distant points on the ground or environment.

I Might Cheat On The Grapple With The Parachute: You can deploy your parachute at any time, pretty much anywhere if you’ve got even a few metres of air between your feet and the ground. A single button press deploys it and releases it, which is very low-fuss given all the guns you’ve got to handle. Once you master the pitch (point up, not down and you’ll gain altitude!) and the grappling-to-the-ground technique, you might even forget to hijack cars.

We Could Have A Threesome With The Stunt Driving: Car chases are infinitely more fun when you’re not actually driving. It’s way better instead to let the car’s momentum do the work while you straddle the front of the car as cover and shoot at the dudes climbing onto the back of your car, trying to kill you.

Final Thoughts
Just Cause 2 is pretty and violent and expansive — just like sandbox third-person shooter/action games ought to be. It’s really the grapple combined with the parachute that sets this game apart from, say, Mercenaries 2 or Saints Row 2.

Also, it occurs to me that if the game really went for realism with the parachute/grappling thing, discarded parachutes and wires would be littered all over Panau by the end of the game. Also, Rico would be covered in vomit.

So forgive me if I can’t come up with enough Star Trek quips or effectively weigh in on the Kirk vs. Picard debate. I can, at best, recite the lines from the J. J. Abrams film and shout out “Khan” when somebody cuts me off in traffic. Also, I can tell you about this here Star Trek MMO that’s been something like six years in the making.

What Is It?
Star Trek Online is a massively multiplayer game previously under development at the now-dead Perpetual Entertainment. Cryptic Studios picked up the aborted project in 2008 and started almost completely over for the game we have now.

What We Saw
I saw a quick demo of a space combat and ground combat before being turned loose on the mission “Stranded in Space” which combines elements of the two.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is due out February 2, 2010.

What Needs Improvement?
Canon Clarity: Licenses are a funny thing — so much so that the developer couldn’t exactly articulate to me what Star Trek Online can and can’t do as far as incorporating stuff like the Borg and Space Lincoln. They did say that the MMO should be treated as canon since it takes place in the prime timeline (the non-J. J. Abrams one) and that canon things like the Borg might show up. However, there was some confusion about the alien races that players can customise right down to the skin colour. As Cryptic seems to understand it, if a custom-made alien race gets really popular, it could become canon if enough people download it. The possibilities are heady and all; but it’s kind sad to think somebody could put a lot of work into building an alien race of their own that then magically winds up in a new Star Trek movie and they don’t get any credit for their creation.

No Catchphrases/Bridge Banter (Yet): Currently, the only talking that goes on between non-playable characters and the captain that you take the role of happens in text boxes. There’s no free-flowing banter between bridge crewmates and no way to click on individual NPCs during away missions just to chat them up. Cryptic says they’re currently looking into adding the catchphrases we’re used to hearing from the series during space combat (”Warp speed”, “Reroute power to the shields”, “Great shot kid, don’t get cocky”, etc.) — but at the moment, it’s all silent and somewhat stilted.

What Should Stay The Same?
Space Isn’t Slow: I was afraid the space combat and travel would be too much like Eve Online — where you have to wait ages for anything to happen. Instead, I was pleased to see somewhat snappy movement and reasonable physics to account for the fact that you’re manoeuvring a huge starship, not a tiny fighter craft. And while the game confines the 360 degrees of space to just forward, back, left and right for the shields, you have the full range of 360 degrees to use in movement so you can evade fire and break line of sight (and tachyon blast) by getting behind asteroids and stuff. Also, the game gives the player the ability to throttle more or less power between the four sections of the shields. This comes in handy when you’re too close to a ship about to explode and need to absorb the shock on your aft shields.

Ground Isn’t So Bad: It’s totally not regulation for a captain to take half the bridge planetside with him as an Away Team (that’s what Red Shirts are for!), but the game lets you do it anyway with your three favourite bridge crew members. While in space, these members have special abilities and buff/debuffs depending on their class (Science Officer, Communications, etc.) — but on the ground, you can outfit them with whatever weapons and equipment you like and either let the AI drive them around, or command their every move. The Away Team will still bring some special abilities with them planetside like Harvesting or Diplomacy stats you can use. But if you don’t feel like making room for them, you can always leave ‘em on the ship and meet up with other real-life buddies on some planet to shoot at stuff.

Set Phasers To Vaporize! During ground combat, when people are shooting NPCs, you’ll sometimes see a yellow icon pop up on a disoriented enemy. Pressing the secondary fire on a certain gun vaporises that enemy and it’s pretty neat. Who needs a stun function, anyway?

Final Thoughts
I wasn’t so wowed by the ground combat, but space blew me away. If this were a singleplayer game, I’d still be happy with it. But I guess with so many Trekkies in the world, it’d be a waste not to turn Star Trek into an MMO for the masses to enjoy.

Halloween might be long gone for 2009, but Japanese horror is fashionable all year round. Or at least Hudson hopes to make it so with Calling.

As the name suggests, there’s an awful lot of cell phone usage in the horror/adventure game. During a demo given to games journalists by the Japanese director, a poor woman finds a haunted mobile phone that just wouldn’t stop ringing. Even worse, she keeps answering it and the ghost on the other end keeps giving her updates on its progress (e.g. “I’m on the second floor landing…”). I imagine it would have been scarier in context, but at the time, it was downright funny. Especially because I had no idea which floor the girl started on, so I wasn’t sure if the ghost was really close or just taking forever to climb the freaking stairs.

Also, if that haunted phone was the ghost’s phone — and she said it was — what phone was the ghost calling from to provide the status updates?

What Is It?
Calling is a horror/adventure game with four main characters for the player to guide through a branching storyline. There are multiple endings, ghostly encounters and creepy environments to explore and hopefully survive.

What We Saw
After watching the demo, games journalists were given the chance to play through a single level starring a male character trapped in the empty apartment of a traditional Japanese doll maker.

How Far Along Is It?
Still in alpha — the game isn’t due out ’til some unspecified time in 2010.

What Needs Improvement?
A Little Bit Waggly: For the most part, the Wiimote’s motion controls are limited to gentle flicks to open doors or slide screens aside. However, there were two instances in the level where a ghost got the jump on the player and to get free you either had to mash the A button with perfect timing (like a quick time event), or just waggle furiously until the ghost let go. Guess which method is easier?

What Should Stay The Same?
It’s Actually Kind of Scary: There was a part in the game where a guy comes upon a room where the sliding doors only open partway. Looking through the door and down, you can see the dead body of the doll maker. After sighting this grisly thing, I turned the character around to go into another room — but I stopped because I heard shuffling and giggling behind me. So I turned the character back around and — gah! — there were dozens of the creepy little dolls filling the slit of the partly-opened doors. Their hair fluttered and their eyes blinked and they were tittering at me in the creepiest way. It was genuinely upsetting.

Movement Is Controlled With The analogue Stick: This is the best possible way to control motion from the first person perspective, I think.

Final Thoughts
I came down pretty hard on Ju-on not because it was a nuanced Japanese horror experience (which Calling also strives to be), but because it fell flat on its face in the scary department. I realise minimalist storytelling is a big part of Japanese horror films — but I think this cost Ju-on dearly in the gameplay department. So already, Calling is a cut above where Ju-on wound up even in this early stage of development. Here’s hoping the final product goes even farther toward that ideal scary experience.

In this moody puzzle game, players take the role of a mysterious person invited to a mysterious birthday party in a mysterious building. Sensing a theme here?

What Is It?
Rooms is a puzzle game where players navigate each room of a hotel by completing a sliding panel puzzle. The player’s character can only occupy one panel at a time and can only move between panels that are connected by ladders, teleporting phone boxes or doors. Each sliding panel puzzle has one gold-lined door within it that you’re trying to move your character to.

What We Saw
I played three intermediate-level puzzles.

How Far Along Is It?
Crazy early days. The game isn’t due out on Wii or DS until some unspecified point in 2010 and the developer is still making gameplay related decisions about what should be in the game.

What Needs Improvement?
Move Tracker: At present, the game doesn’t seem to know or care how many moves it takes you to slide all the panels where they need to be. It’s something the developer might consider adding — and I really hope they do, or else the game will be missing out on a basic layer of skill tracking that games like Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box appeal to.

It’s SO Small: Currently, the puzzle plane on the lower screen has a thick border around it and the individual panels of puzzles are barely bigger than a thumb print. This makes it really hard to see your brown-clad character in the sepia toned rooms and robs Rooms of some of its noir charm by limiting what you can see.

What Should Stay The Same?
Challenging: I didn’t get stuck in any of the three sliding puzzles, but I definitely got confused or turned around a few times. To me, this proves the concept of the game as something I want to take with me on public transit.

The Puzzles Scale Up: The intermediate puzzles were only on a 3×2 grid or a 3×3 grid — but harder levels can scale up to 8×8 girds which will probably take an awful lot of time to sort out.

Platform-Specific Features: The Wii version will have a two-player versus mode where you race each other to complete the puzzle (I assume in shortest amount of time as opposed to least number of moves). Meanwhile, the DS version will let you create your own levels to upload using Wifi for other players to try.

Final Thoughts
I really liked what I saw of Rooms. If it keeps developing along the lines its been using, it’ll shape up into a proper love-child of Professor Layton and Hotel Dusk.

My fondness for baldness has faded since that idyllic time (thanks, puberty) and I no longer need a babysitter to supply my Nintendo fix. However, that feeling of being young and unreasonably anxious about jumping puzzles we gamers call nostalgia never gets old when you see a classic game resurrected on the consoles of today.

What Is It?
Bonk: Brink of Extinction is a brand new adventure for the classic prehistoric character on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and WiiWare. There are three worlds with 30 levels total and while the gameplay stays classic (side-scrolling action), everything is rendered in lush 3D.

What We Saw
I played through area 5-1, a verdant jungle level fraught with peril and fruit pickups.

How Far Along Is It?
Still in alpha. The title is due out in spring 2010.

What Needs Improvement?
Ack! 2.5D! I’ve already expressed my distaste for games with fake 2D platforming glued onto 3D environments. However, I admit it’s only really a problem when you either can’t see something in a level or struggle with a jump that looks easy, but actually isn’t because you’re in the wrong plane of depth. Fortunately, Bonk didn’t suffer from the former — just a little bit of the latter in areas where you had to turn around, find a ledge inside a tree and somehow jump up to it. At least there were no cliffs to fall off of…

What Should Stay The Same?
Loving The Power-up Helmets: I only vaguely remember Bonk’s “bonk” powers changing based on which types of meat he ate. I do not have any memory of a Fire Bonk that lets Bonk shoot fireballs or a triceratops skull that both looks neat and does more damage during the bonk attack. Lacking nostalgia or not, though, the different Bonk power-ups keep things interesting and look ridiculously cute.

Gorgeous Graphics: The 3D rendering might cause some clunky platforming, but man does it look pretty.

Yay! It’s Bonk: Bonk rides mighty high on the nostalgia cloud, so high that not even new stuff is likely to bring him down. So if you’re a fan of the classic game, I’m actually not sure why you’re still reading this preview. You’ve already decided to buy it, right?

Final Thoughts
I’m not sure whatever happened to the cool babysitter with the Nintendo. But, Daniel, if you’re out there, don’t worry! I totally grew out of throwing controllers in frustration.

Lucky for you, Skate 3 developer Black Box is aware of this challenge and dealt with it once before in Skate 2.

What Is It?
Skate 3 is the follow up to last year’s non-Tony Hawk skater sim, Skate 2. The setting is new, the modes are somewhat familiar and the emphasis is on team gameplay this time instead of the solo experience.

What We Saw
EA sat games journalists down in groups for a quick rundown of all the new features plus a multi-round multiplayer face off in several different gameplay modes. The modes (as I frantically wrote them down between loading screens) were: Race, Domination, One-Up, Contest and Own-the-Lot.

How Far Along Is It?
Very early days. Skate 3 is built on Skate 2’s engine, so everything looks farther along than it is and probably will move along quickly — but it was still what you’d call “alpha”.

What Needs Improvement?
Race: It is so hard to get back on the right track once you’ve hosed yourself in a race. I was doing damn fine at the beginning, but when I messed up a jump by trying to flick my trick stick (read: right stick), I wound up facing the wrong way and the game reset me on the race track right back where I’d failed the trick with zero momentum to get up the vertical wall from which I was trying to do a trick jump. It ruined the pace of the race and of course put me in last place. (And no, I didn’t mean for that to rhyme, it just came out that way.)

Skate.School: Sadly, EA wasn’t ready to show off Skate.School — their tutorial mode. I put it here because it’s really, really important that the developer nail the tutorials in Skate 3. So much of the gameplay rides on a team experience and there doesn’t seem to be a space that’s really all about solo skating except for the tutorial. Without a solid tutorial experience to catch everyone up, newcomers are going to be left in the dust (and totally demoralised when they realise they’re the weak link) by their teammates.

Not Fundamentally Different: Some people griped that Skate 2 was really Skate 1.5. Those same people might be tempted to say that Skate 3 is really Skate 2 because when you get down to it, new tricks and new modes doesn’t necessarily make a new game. The might even call Skate 3 Skate 1.75, if they’re being particularly harsh.

What Should Stay The Same?
One-Up: Easily the most nerve-wracking mode of them all, One-Up also turned out to be the most fun. You and your posse start out at the beginning of a track while a rival posse watches from nearby. When the timer goes off, you have something like 60 seconds to rack up as many points as you can by doing tricks. If any one of you falls of his or her board, your time automatically expires and the other team gets to try and one-up your score on the course. It was really fun — especially when I realised that on one track, it was the experienced developer who fell down and cost us the match, not me. I was being smart and just doing kickflips in a corner.

Hall of Meat Defaults to Off: I loved Hall of Meat because I’m a bad skater so it feels good to see some kind of rewards system for totally wiping out on even the easiest jumps. But the developer told me that people (particularly people who didn’t realise you could turn Hall of Meat slow-mo displays off) weren’t too fond of it. So Black Box has separated Hall of Meat from the main gameplay and given players the option to pursue it or ignore it completely. I didn’t get to see this because the revamped Hall of Meat isn’t ready yet, but more details forthcoming.

Not Fundamentally Different: The first two games were really good and mostly accessible games. Skate 3 seems to meet those same benchmarks, so what’s not to like?

Final Thoughts
Customisation from the community was a huge part of Skate 2, but it’s the absolute life blood of Skate 3. From dedicated posses who take on the entire community online to niche artists who get off on designing team logos for other players to use and even on to would-be filmmakers who capture some of the craziest stunts or recreate true machinima, Skate 3 is all about a multiplayer, community-driven experience. So if you want solo skating, I have a feeling you’re going to be disappointed. But if you’re still thrilled with Skate 2 and ready for more multiplayer, this is your game right here.