Street Sk8er
(Electronic Arts for PlayStation)
by Eric Johnson
Not recommended to anyone for any reason and not worth owning even if received for free, Street Sk8er is an absolute mystery wrapped in an enigma. The mystery is why would anyone put so little effort into designing a skateboarding game when the potential for a good game and financial success is so present. Didn’t they realize that the very teenage boys mutilating themselves on a daily basis trying to pull off rail slides at the local war memorial are the exact demographic that the video game industry preys upon? The enigma is the fact that so awful a game is put on the market to coincide with the eagerly-awaited domestic release of Tony Hawk’s skateboarding game.
Ultimately, a good skateboarding game would be a bit of a free-for-all, a wide-open area in which the player could maneuver around, pulling off tricks, jumping onto park benches and local monuments. In order to progress in the game, the player should have to demonstrate his or her abilities and pull off some radical moves in a timed environment, or something to that effect. As the game progresses, the player would go to more complicated areas and perhaps be chased by the cops or get extra points for pissing off old ladies.
Somehow, the producers of Street Sk8er decided that instead of the free-for-all feeling, the main objective would be to race through a designated area with a minimal number of hazards, desperately trying to rack up points off of the occasional ramp or half pipe. The tricks, if you can call them that, are executed with a single button press – once in the air, you hit X and point up or down and you’ll spin and pull off maneuvers. The thing is, you can’t pull off combination moves, there’s no skill involved in doing the tricks so there’s no payoff, and there’re not enough obstacles to rack up the number of points you need to pass most levels. In the mean time, a grating announcer with a deviated septum keeps screaming out stupid, pseudo-hip terms like “You’re Stoked!” and “Huge Air!” when you pull off a stunt and “Mediiic!!” if you fall down.
The genericore soundtrack doesn’t help matters any. Each character has a “Favorite Song” by artists like Less than Jake, and while playing with that character, his or her song keeps repeating over and over. Occasional bonus rounds allow for some extra, uninterrupted airtime, but as previously mentioned, with no skill to learn, the progressively more visually complicated tricks offer no sense of accomplishment.
It’s rare for me to find nothing good to say about a game – even those I seriously dislike have some interesting idea or feature that deserves mention. Street Sk8er has nothing going for it. It fails on every level, and there are no circumstances under which I would recommend it. In fact, I think I’d rather have the clap than pay money for this game.
