Skate 3 Hands-on
This time, you're not alone.
November 5, 2009 - Team up. Throw down. That's the tagline for Skate 3, the third entry in EA Black Box's open world skateboarding franchise. More than just a simple catchphrase, it almost perfectly describes the focal point of the next game: teams. It seems that everything you do in Skate 3 will revolve around teams, be it online or off, multiplayer or single-player, and this concept looks to blur the relationship between these four states.
While all of my hands-on time was spent playing a number of multiplayer modes, EA did give us a taste of what to expect from the single-player game. Or, I should say, the main career mode, as you don't have to play it by yourself. This time around you're hitting the streets of Port Carverton, which, while being a brand-new place to skate, looks to offer the same sort of spots that we've seen in the previous two titles. You'll start off in the University Hill district, move into the Downtown area and finish up things in the Industrial zone. Each area will get more difficult to skate as you progress, while also offering up different sights and sounds.
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Skate 3 trailer.
As I mentioned, the entire game is team-based, whether you're playing online or offline, single-player or multiplayer. If you're playing alone, you'll have a couple AI buddies with you competing against opposing teams, though you can play through the career mode cooperatively with your friends. What's cool about this is that it's true co-op in both directions; in other words, you and your friend(s) will get credit in each of your games for completing goals. But, as it's a dynamic setup, you could opt to sometimes play with AI and sometimes play with real people and make progress in the same career regardless of whom you're playing with.
To facilitate this team-based online structure as easily as possible, you're able to set up teams of up to 12 people (though that number sounds like it's arbitrary and could theoretically raise prior to launch). Any time you play the game online, be it in the story mode or competitively, you'll automatically be paired with people on your team rather than strangers. To make it easy to find a team, Skate 3 will include some sort of team finder option where you'll be able to search for like-minded folks to play with. So, if you prefer street skating rather than vert and consider yourself to be very good, you can find a team that'll suit you nicely with this tool.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/104/1041914/skate-3-20091104022643444-000.jpg)
Port Carverton will be your new playground.
No sequel would be complete without a few new moves and features, and while the trick set doesn't seem to be a lot different than the last time around, you will find things like darkslides available this time.
Outside of the team-based setup, perhaps the biggest new feature that we were unfortunately only given a quick glimpse of is the brand-new park creator. Whereas Skate 2 had a spot creator, Skate 3 will feature a ground-up park creator that will allow you to build a complex from scratch. In the short video tease that we saw, it looked very similar to the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater park creator from days of old, but much more flexible. Parts can be rotated freely in any direction and multiple bits can be put together to create very complex ramps and layouts. Again, all that I had the chance to see was a short teaser video as the nitty gritty details are being held until later, but the promise is definitely there.
In terms of the online portions I had a chance to play, we were set up in matches of three-on-three across five different modes, three of which were new. One of these modes is Domination, where multiple spots in a section can be "won" by setting the high score on it. If someone from the red team scores 300 points on a bench then it'll be a point for their side, but if a blue team member comes by and ups it to 500, that point shifts to the blue team. With more than a dozen objects available for scoring, it can turn into a mad scurry to see what you can hit and how quickly you can nail it as everyone buzzes around.
A second new mode, One-Up, has each team skate an area in turn and attempt to rack up as many points as possible. Your team skates together at the same time and you can do whatever you want until the time is up, but as soon as anyone on your team bails, the round ends and the other team has a go. This goes back and forth until one team can't beat the other's score.
![[IMG]](http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/104/1041914/skate-3-20091104022645944-000.jpg)
Your team is only as strong as each of its members.
The last new mode I tried, and perhaps my favorite of the bunch, is called Own the Lot. The idea here is that you're given three random challenges in a specific area, and the first team to complete each challenge wins that round (everyone skates at the same time). A challenge could be something as simple as having your team score 20,000 points, or there could be a series of a dozen small challenges that your team must work together to complete (perform a grab grind, ollie a fire hydrant and land a darkslide, for example). It's a really slick mode because you don't know what you're going to be asked to do next, requiring that you think on your feet and adapt quickly.
What I've played of Skate 3 feels (and even looks) a lot like Skate 2 with some really fun new online modes. However, the fact that the entire game is team-based could completely change how everything works, and it looks like it could be for the better.
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