I’ve really got to thank my brother-in-law. If I hadn’t watched him playing Skate I’d never have bothered checking it out again after my pretty disastrous time with the demo of the first game. So Curt, thanks very much!

The design view.

It’s fairly simple – choose an object, plonk it down, rotate it – but can be a little fiddly. Getting things to line up is a pain and I ended up just shoving stuff down more or less randomly.

Skating round my spot.

Still, it does feel good to be skating round an area you designed yourself, even if it feels like the Fortean forces of the universe gave up on frogs and decided to indulge themselves with a shower of skateable objects.

See, I can talk like a youth person…

::blinks::

::strokes beard::

::ponders::

…but I never will again.

I’m thirty-six years old. In a survey the other day all the age ranges were about ten years until mine – which was 36-64. Thanks for that, pollsters. Way to make me feel old.

Anyway, that’s by the by. In the world of Skate It, I can still look like a appallingly-dressed twenty-something, albeit one made out of about six polygons.

Looking like a fool...

I can also perform crazy stunts that my obese, failing body would never let me perform in real life. (And I can fall of my skateboard in a manner that would result in feeding tubes and comas.)

Is that the appeal of skateboarding games, though? Not for me, no. The appeal is purely as a video game, rather than a simulation of real world desires. I like to complete goals – whether set for me by the game, or ones I’ve set myself – and the skating is just a vehicle for interesting game mechanics and controls.

I think.

But maybe there’s a part of me that really wishes I could skateboard. Maybe it is feeding on my ever-growing sense of my own mortality. Maybe I’m on the downward slope to my midlife crisis Harley.

Probably not, though. I may be older than I was, but I’m still not, you know, old. And I’d get a Harley today if I could afford it – and thought I could ride it without falling off. (I’m pretty much never happier than on a long road trip in America. The open road of the USA appeals to me, deep down in my core.) Midlife crises are for people who regret growing up. I’ve never really grown up and don’t ever intend to, so I think I’m safe.

The game in question was EA’s Skate It, a portable spin-off from their popular Skate series. Originally a DS game, way back in 2008, they’ve iPhoned this version up and stuck on the App Store for a fraction of the price of a DS game.

As you might expect, given that I’ve not played anything else, it’s rather good. A long way from perfect – the graphics show their DS origins and are really rather ugly – but skating around feels good. The trick system seems a little random, but that’s probably down to me being a bit rubbish and the game being quite generous with how it interprets your input. Pretty much any random swiping will mean something happens.

Tilt to steer, draw lines to do tricks.

There seems to be an absolute ton of content – lots of levels, the ability to create your own skatepark, lots of customisation for your ugly, ugly skater – and I’ve spent most of my time just skating around trying to find lines, rather than doing the actual challenges.

If you can put up with the rough edges, I think there may be something of a gem hidden away here. As always, though, this is a blog post based on playing around with the game for a bit, not a review or definitive verdict. Any opinion I offer in any post on this blog is subject to change.

It was quite easy, though also slightly buggy. I completed a “don’t touch the stairs” challenge by, er, riding down the stairs. Huh.

Still, I’m sure that things like that won’t happen in the full game. Oh, wait… no I’m not.

(That was a horrible sentence. Sorry.)

I liked this version a lot more, mainly because I managed to do all the tricks Jason Lee asked me to do in the training session. I then went into the demo area and played around, trying (and mostly failing) to jump around and grind and make my own awesome lines.

A few years ago I would have bought this game and spent eight hours at a time trying to nail lines I’d made up, but I don’t play games in that way these ways. Still, it’s been ages since I played a new, good skateboarding game, so when this gets cheap enough I might well pick it up.

Rest of the tutorial went okay, but I can’t manual to save my life.