izigame.me

Non-IRL-skater review:
Most reviews boil down to "game is good if you add mods" but I wanted to test the opposite. I have only played vanilla thus far, as you can see about 50h. There's a lot of content, some is filler other teaches you core mechanics (every mechanic is unlocked by default). In this perioid I finished all the missions, story or otherwise save from the hidden ones and phone ones (did a few of them). I had a good amount of fun, some frustration and definitely looked up fakie full cab flips on youtube twice. Skateboarding isn't easy and this game let's you know about it in intimate detail. Review will start with the bad stuff cause I want them seen and ideally addressed by the developers.
Negatives / Constructive Criticism:
- Game is officioally past 1.0 stage of development but feels unpolished mechanic, cosmetic, goal tracking and animation wise. It's usually fun to play but you're definitely not getting too immersed, a bug is waiting around the corner be it invisible rocks, weird collisions with your feet, board, walls, ground etc. This is about 10% of all gameplay. Too much for a 1.0 release imho. Oh and sometimes landing a trick required even when the game registers it, won't trigger the mission checkpoint.
- DLCs are short on content / value for the money, means that someone from the team is a little too hungry for profit, which is fine as long as the value is delivered.
- Few more animations need to be mo-capped, like running off your board, throwing down your board to ride it, rolling away from a bail parkour style... Like does my guy really have to fall face first into the sidewalk when I'm rolling with brisk walking pace into it? Or when I hit the imaginary rocks? At a certain speed it might be the case but that's 1% of the cases.
- Rethink manuals,they might work with a perfect stick controller (ps5 maybe), but I for example have MSI GC30s which are kinda some of the best you can get and yet they're not sensitive enough to pick up what I am doing. I had a really hard time with the Daewon missions and still can't pull off cool looking fluent manual combos.
- Models are very lame / cloned - none of the pro skaters look like themselves, some are downright funny. You can't stick a jpg over the same polygons we have much better technology available in 2023. My friend that's making a 3d fighting game for the first time has added himself and his gf as test players and their faces look super similar to real life. Ijs. Clothes clip through other clothes more often than not.
- Controls are a bit difficult to "get" first time around, you might need 5-15 h to "land more than you bail" depending on your skill level and experience with this genre. This is slightly offset by the fact you can literally affect the gameplay and physics via sliders from the in-game menu, making a varying degree of difficulty and removing crutch by crutch until you become an independent skater controlling both feet, rotation, pivot and catching each trick manually. It can get as realistic as you want to make it, but there are ways to make it arcadey too.
- Add a face editor, add beards, add shorts. These things are QOL and need to be in the base game.
Now for some of the positives, as I am ultimately recommending this game:
- Fully customizable physics and gameplay. It can be as hands-on or as automated as you like. You won't be able to get THPS' arcade level of ease but it's still miles above manual catch hell.
- You can change weather, day/night, add pedestrians, edit their density etc.
- 3 big maps-with many locations
- Skate shops sell cool merch, and you get enough money to buy all you need and want after a few days of playing and mission progress.
- Your board gets wear and tear and can even break, then you only keep the trucks and wheels.
- Graphics are descent but I wish for better fps optimization.
- Plenty of content
- Mod community is alive and well but it's not really on Nexus, you gotta download some mod editor first, JL Nightmare on youtube has the scoop on that. I'll be dipping my toes in modded Session soon enough and might update this review then. EDIT: Had to come tell y'all the mods are cool and all but definitely set up the Physics Menu that right there is a life changer, you can select faces, gender, new clothes, backpack, haircuts etc with actual physics seemlessly as you play. There's also an autoload feature so that your custom character stays the same when you load another map. I had my guy riding in Timbs holding a glizzy in his hand with an MF DOOM mask on and dreads with his cap backwards and shirt open going crazy bumping Cooking Soul in his airpods. Oh and his backpack had on all kids of cans, tools, a gameboy and YOU GET THE PICTURE this stuff is fun!
- Ultimately, the game is fun and rewarding as it is, as you can see by my play time. It's not an ideal example of good execution but it's not a buggy mess either. What made me buy it is the devs clearly working on it and updating it as they go. Last year I've bootlegged a copy and played around 10ish hours so I can see and tell big improvements since that version, a much more playable game. It's pretty much the best looking and most easily customizable skating simulation we got at the moment.
Pick it up on sale and have fun!