Skate 3 Preview

Gnarly! Totally tubular! Cowabunga! Um... Eat my shorts!

The next game mode I tried was Domination, a sort of territory-claiming competition in which players fight over designated hotspots placed around the map. If you pull off a trick in the vicinity of one of these markers it'll turn to the colour of your team, but if a rival manages to perform a better example of skating showmanship, it'll switch to theirs. It's a test of nerves, patience and skill - and under the pressure of a ticking clock, I totally flunked it. Failure rarely feels unfair in Skate 3, but it's hard not to feel foolish when you hit a curb and sail into a tree... especially when you've already bailed four times in the past minute.

Still, Skate has always been about the fine line between perfection and utter disaster. When you pull off a flashy string of moves you feel like a pro, and when things go wrong you usually get a good laugh out of the painful results. This dynamic was particularly evident in the last and best mode that I played: 1 Up. Here each team is given 20 seconds to earn as high a score as possible by pulling off tricks. One side sets the bar, then the other has a go at beating it; if they're successful, play passes back to the first team, with the contest continuing until one side fails. If anyone wipes out, their failure will prematurely end the scoring session - so there's considerable pressure on anyone who tries a difficult move or combo. If you're feeling cowardly you might just do kick-flips on the spot for 20 seconds, but sooner or later you'll have to man up and try something impressive.

I didn't get long to play Skate 3 amid the chaos of EA's winter showcase, and yet it ended up being one of the games that left the biggest impression on me. The core gameplay remains as addictive and as satisfying as it ever was, but the focus on team activities really does seem to add something new. It's all too easy to get drawn into the competition, cheering on your mates and jeering when an opponent comes a cropper. The game looks really nice, too. After the dystopian darkness of San Vanelona in Skate 2, this follow-up has shifted location to Port Carverton - a skater-friendly place built with boards in mind. It's a city of open, skate-friendly architecture, so expect backdrops to be brighter and more colourful than what we were given last time.

On top of this, EA has promised that the excellent movie-making and board-designing tools will return - and this time there will also be an editor for creating your own skate parks. We've yet to see anything of this last addition, but it's sure to be shown off in the near future - and given the game's community focus, I'd expect EA to offer something fairly comprehensive. The first two Skates have won the franchise a reputation for quality, so let's hope that Black Box can deliver the goods for a third time in a row.

Skate 3 will be released on PS3 and Xbox 360 in May 2010.