The fact that it’s all tied together with a narrative-driven story also makes it more like a Tony Hawk’s Underground game than the original games in the series, which is very welcome. It was something else entirely, and the second I embraced that, the controls started making sense-and that’s when I fell fully in love with the game.īeing a skateboarding bird is all about skating with purpose, and the missions in SkateBIRD are bite-sized and feel very intentional. But I don’t think it was until one mission where I was informed of the double ollie (you’re playing as a bird who can fly, after all!) that something clicked for me. And as I continued to play the game, finding more cute birds, sending me off on little missions of their own, it all started making more sense to me. When I did, better-rested and in a better mood, I got it on my second try. I probably tried a dozen times before getting frustrated (as well as experiencing some pretty major motion sickness), so I put the game away, promising to try again the next day. I’m not sure why, but I could not do this for the life of me.
When I finally did meet one of these birds, I was tasked with grinding four soup bowls under a giant bed. I found some secret collectibles-additional music tracks in the form of cassettes, and more accessories for my bird to wear-but it took me an embarrassingly long time to locate one of the birds in the game who gives out missions, allowing players to progress. Was it muscle memory from the Tony Hawk games making it hard to understand these controls? The gist was the same-B to ollie, A to grab, Y to kickflip and X to grind-and yet I couldn’t quite get the hang of it.Īnd then there was the fact that it took me a while to figure out what exactly I could do. As I skated around and did what I could to grasp the controls, something about it just felt off. I was ready and excited, though as the first level loaded up, I started to feel that dread creep in. Here, you also have the choice to customize your skateboard wheel color and design, though oddly, there’s no way to actually see the skateboard pattern you’re swapping from the angle presented on this screen, and I’ve yet to find a place in the game where it’s easy to see the board designs. Immediately, I gravitated toward the kakapo (a personal favorite bird, native to New Zealand, which due to having no natural predators evolved into a flightless, massive parrot), though later in the game, I did swap over to the Stellar’s jay, a gorgeous bluejay with a black crest that I see pretty much daily since I moved to the Pacific Northwest. It’s clear that the team behind the game did not skimp in this area, because in addition to being able to pick accessories to wear on your bird’s head, face, neck, back and waist, there were a stunning 38 bird species to choose from, ranging from parrots and parakeets to owls, pigeons, finches, kingfishers and so much more. The art was adorable, and my journey started with customizing my character on the Create-a-Bird screen. I can’t say it was love at first sight, but today, I’d pick playing SkateBIRD over a Tony Hawk game in a heartbeat.Īs I started up my game of SkateBIRD, I was immediately charmed by the presentation of the game. Maybe it was because I struggled to find my groove with the gameplay, or I was still tired of those same old tracks that I’d heard a billion times 20 years ago, but it just didn’t click for me the way it used to, and I quickly abandoned it.Īs I got my hands on SkateBIRD, I had to hope that the same thing wouldn’t happen.
#SKATEBIRD SWITCH PRO#
That’s why I was so excited for last year’s release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, a remaster of the classic games first released in 19.īut when I did get that game, I booted it up, played for a couple of hours and then felt completely unmotivated to continue. I grew up playing the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, and even though I was never great at them, there was always something captivating about the skateboarding gameplay, the epic soundtracks and the quest to chain together as many awesome tricks as possible without falling on your butt. 16, but we were lucky enough to get a review key on the Nintendo Switch ahead of its release, and after completing it, it’s become one of my favorite titles of the year. The game is officially out tomorrow, Sep.
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