The Hardcore Comparison

[Unflexed]

If you stop reading this half way through, you'll turn into a banana.

I'll start with the cons:

The Drop In
Who the hell drops in to be slowed down to a crawl? And lets face it, it's hella annoying trying to set your board down on a narrow ledge and eating a faceplant because he thinks your trying to bust in on a halfpipe.

Call A Skater
Good concept, bad overall effect. Why call up some dude with a blue line behind him when you can follow one of the other over abuntant skaters that do the same shit as your so called "friend" including telling you to watch it if you get to close, Because he gets magically poofed back to you when gets to a certain distance? No thanks.

Mix it up abit Black Box
Do the city folks migrate to port carverton for the summer or something? Cause i see the same fat ass tourist's from skate 2's inner city, and her voice didn't improve in the least.

Skaters are Pussies?
I punched that same large love handled women 6 or 7 times before she fell over from god knows what, and before i knew it she lays my ass out with 1 clean blow. Why give us a broken weapon? Might as well put guns but no ammunition in the game.

Really Black Box?
Backside is when you stand with you butt........ STFU, if i wanted to be treated like a 12 year old without pubic hair i'd go to skate camp with tony hawk. Why put tidbits for things you already covered in "trick guide"? What happened to Robby D's favorite trick? Or maybe his favorite in game spot? This is skateboard not iceskating, show some style!

Run, Jog, or sprint.
I've seen some lame ass animations in my time, so i can't diss to hard on BB's attempt at making a hardly important part of skating into something i'm not sure is even any better then there last try, but where the hell did side step/walk go? And why do i run like a charater in flash gordon, i keep waiting for the hit of speed he took to wear off... It never does.

Hall of Lame
Who the crap breaks 4 ribs, shatters an ankle, cracks open his skull, and eats a mountful of concrete then decides to kick off the ground for an extra bit of painful pleasure..... 6 or 7 times!!!?? Plus no random HoM's when just skating around? Feels more like a burnout crash mode then skateboarding. Not to mention jumping off a building looks as painful as hitting a curb wrong in skate2.

Campus Scare
Skating for the first 15-20 minutes of skate3 frightened me to all hell. Seeing a track and field skatepart, a suburb with one place(maybe 1 and half) to skate, and a coach more eccentric then a GTA character bought my hype from a 110% to about 4.2%. To be fair i was unaware of the good things i would soon find.


The Good The Better, and the Best

Manual Glory
Underneath the carverton port, is a SICK little ledge that curves into a nice 90 degrees onto the street, upon seeing this i was sure i was going to grind the sides for 10 minutes before saying F-IT, but to my great surprise within the first couple perfectly aimed ollies my front wheels tasted the sweet honey of clean rolling atop a narrowed pad of concrete. A crisp flip onto the ghetto streets never felt so glorious. Great job on that aspect BB!

Sportin` the Brand
BB's got some creativeness in them, stickers around to city is definitly a nice touch. But let's see some real loyalty to the major board company, hows about that cute black haired college chick strips down to a bikini after 1mill sales and gets my logo tramp stamped on her back! Then i'll be motivated.

Port Carverton, Land of the Free
Put a camera anywhere i want? Take the picture whenever i want? Doesnt matter if i even land the trick? Oh you are too kind. What is to stop us from photo'ing that fugly tourist lady taking a board to the grill on the final thrasher mag cover? NOTHING! Some say revenge is bittersweet, but hey, atleast now we can decide for ourselves.

Low Pops, High Dreams
Seeing that casual hop from a grind into a manual, or onto a flat, even to another grind brings image of toast to my mind, and this time... Theres butter on it! Lots of it, that much smoothness could clog the arteries!

What? I'm Anti-Social From Replays?
Start, Scroll right, Scroll down, Skate.Reel, WHAT!? An ingame Watch/Delete Replay mode? AND it loads fast?!? Now i don't have to sit on my ass all day deleting my drunk midnight "SICKKKK" Saves? Damn i liked doing that after a hangover.

Cali Sunshine EVERYDAY
Well, Black Box, you've done it again, both the downtown and that portside areas make me believe tomorrow could be a great day for lazy bastards like myself who love to skate, but live in shit ass towns that rain 370 days out of the year. Overall---- 60 ObamaBucks well spent.


EDIT:: BTW all this was observed in HC mode, never even loaded a normal/easy game. Feel free to add/disagree with any of it.

[yellowsnow]

I actually find the sticker thing a little annoying, maybe their are just too many of them.

And I like parts of the University, campus entrance is cool, and the backyard pools are nice.

[pawnluvguitarist]

make sure you pump when dropping in...

you can pump on the way up and down while skating transitions...

The combination up pumping just up, down, or both gives you full control over the speed you want...

just sayin...

[heshfield]

Great bit of reading there; nice post.

[Unflexed]

Yeah the stickers get old, but with all the sunshine i bet those chicks don't even have tan lines...

Hell i'd even say have them drop/pick something up every now and again---JUST so you could get a good look at your logo of course... The bending motion flattens it..... Perverts.

They'd probably screw up the animation though, and DethLockMetal would get another million viewed 5 star rated picture.
What'a pimp, Still don't know how he bagged that chick, she was hella stuck up.

[schnavolda]

Plus no random HoM's when just skating around?

that's deactivated by default.

go into the pause menu -> game settings -> control settings -> hall of meat mode on/off

[Tricky]

that's deactivated by default.

go into the pause menu -> game settings -> control settings -> hall of meat mode on/off

I think he meant the way HoM works as specific missions rather than random... achievement type goals.

Like in skate 2 you could complete a HoM by accident. In fact the first few you probably do, also you could, technically complete a HoM "anywhere", not so much in skate 3, now we have to do an unconvingly slow-gliding spread-eagle into a specific object.

It's different and will probably grow on me but I see what he means. I kinda preffered HoM in skate 2 though, half of the appeal of HoM for me was that it was vaguely realistic. It obeyed the physics that the rest of the game did mostly but it's far less convincing now, not least of all because of how much the spread eagle slows your decent down.

I do have HoM on in the settings though, it's nice to see what you've broken but those suprise, consolation prize type scoreboards? I miss them somewhat but meh... skating is the name of the game anyway eh? Literally.

[KRiSPY_ENJOISK8R]

speaking of breaking bones lets see i fell off a 20 story high building on my head n i broke my arms n toes WTF

[Antwan]

If you ask me hardcore just made manuals, popless, and low ollie tricks easier the challenge is making easy look tech and real.. mhm.. that's what IM about son..
sure manuals are easy but hardcore just gives you them you have to work for grinds.. easy you have to work for manuals.. its not really hardcore.

[volcomston3d]

If you actually compare drop-ins, they arent slow at all. The game just makes it look like it. You go pretty equally high up on a vert ramp than you would in real life, just pump.

[lunchmeat]

I'm going to add my two cents to this even though this thread died about a month ago. It's still on the first page, so I guess it's fair game? Don't know the etiquette here.

I'll follow the format of the OP here.

The bad:

-Pedestrians. I went back and bought OG Skate and the pedestrians in that game are intelligent; although they don't avoid you quickly like the other games, they use crosswalks and generally stay out of your way when they can. They'll even line up to watch you skate if you're doing well.

The pedestrians in Skate 3 are the equivalent of large, drunken chickens. They walk into each other (and they will repeat this over and over - it's like watching some bizarre mating ritual), they walk in the streets, they crowd your skatespot when you skate...it's horrid. The locals of PC must be on some really good shit.

-Shingo. A lot of people hated hearing Reda all the time, which is understandable. He worked really well in OG Skate and not so well in Skate 2. Shingo, however, is completely quiet until you find a spot - then, his voice jars you out of the peaceful skate slumber you had going, only to say "hey, we should look around". It's just weird - you forget that he's supposed to be there, and then he's there, and then you feel slightly violated.

-The music. It's pretty atrocious in comparison to the other two. I turned it off, and that sucked, and then I turned it back on....and that sucked. I finally settled for turning it down to 30% volume. It still sucks, though.

-The character creator. It's adequate (and has some nice features, like rotating your skater at any time), but lacking some options that were found in the first two.

-Non-player characters. In Free Skate, you can skate as any of them. In career mode, none of them really play a large role in the story - the teammates you have are pretty much just cardboard cutouts, as they have no bearing or effect on the story, and the pros are just kind of there.

-NPC voices. The voices are pleasant - they aren't annoying - but sometimes I think I'll go crazy if I hear my female teammate say "aw man, c'MON" one more time. It'd be nice to have a return to the OG sound bites, where other skaters would brag about how good they are.

The good

-The mechanics. Running, although kind of comical, is a great utility because of its speed. The skateboarding feels closer to OG Skate than Skate 2, which for me is a really good thing. Putting in the game and sitting back to skate is what it's all about.

-Hardcore Mode. Set it and forget it - this really makes the game. Became even better when they fixed the grinds.

-Style and Posture - they brought back Loose and Aggressive from OG. Truly a godsend, as the default style in Skate 2 really just pissed me off. (Looks like a flailing puppet, to me, but at least it's not as bad as OG style...jesus.) Posture is pretty cool, as I can now emulate Quasimodo with my skater.

-Free Play. You can freeskate whenever you want by pausing the game and going to free play - I don't have to quit the game and restart from the title screen. In fact, there is no title screen in this game - you can get to everything from the pause menu in-game. Very nice.

That's about it. If I was drunk, this might have been a better read, but oh well.

[K05T0N]

Now i don't have to sit on my ass all day deleting my drunk midnight "SICKKKK" Saves? Damn i liked doing that after a hangover.


haha sickkkkk

[stuey2dope]

Cons -

Hitting the session marker skips the song/restarts the song thats playing. May not be so baf for some, but I bail alot. :)

Peds crowding your spot. Really bugs me when you've lined up something nice to have someone randomly walk infront of you.

HOM. Although I don't really play it outside of the challenges, I feel it's so far away from what Skate 2's HOM was all about. The fact that you could decide where you'd do your stuff, and the way everything was more 'ragdoll'. The spread Eagle stuff ruines it IMO. I'd rather be Judo kicking peds in Skate 2.

And thats all I really got.

Pros-

They far outweight the Cons. Hardcore mode is a constant outside of online ranked play. It's a joy. Makes everything 10x better.

CAP is awesome. Some of the stuff that I've seen recently (Ghetto Town being my favourite) is just brilliant. I'm pretty bad at it, but being downloading all these great parks is a brilliant thing for everyone in the community. New places to skate all the time.

Object dropper Can change everything. Not had much to do with it yet (A testiment to the depth of the game) but have seen some great use of it in vdeos from others. Looking forward to that.

Filming has been helped with the auto-correct when you hit floors etc. Some people are unhappy about this, but I feel it's a good thing.

There are so many more too, but I gotta get out the door for work.

[punkinate]

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Definitely the greatest S3 pro/con list that will ever be compiled.