Skate: Our First Impressions - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: "Skate: Our First Impressions"

Episode Date: September 17, 2025
Hosts: Andy Cortez, Blessing Adeoye Jr., Mike (Mongo Skating Mike), Barrett
Main Topic: First Impressions and Discussion of SKATE (Early Access)

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the crew's first experiences with the newly released SKATE early access. The hosts review the game's mechanics, art style, customization, social/multiplayer features, and live service elements, offering honest opinions on both what works and what feels lacking. The feel of the classic SKATE gameplay is weighed against changes in visuals, structure, and community content.

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Skater Banter & Set-Up (00:00–09:08)

• Hosts kick things off with playful banter about "Mongo pushing" (an infamous skating technique) and stream highlights.
• Inside jokes about Mike's unconventional skating style set the casual, humorous tone:
  • "He's always been Mongo push." — Barrett (00:52)
  • "Does it change your gameplay? Like, does it make you faster?" — Mike (00:56)
  • "No, you just don't look as cool." — Blessing (00:59)
• Brief detour into Kinda Funny business, podcast housekeeping, and member shoutouts.
• Chat about food, cultural exchange, and the idea for a team potluck brings warmth and personality.

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Skate: Early Access Impressions

General Thoughts & Concerns (09:08–13:52)

• Blessing: Highlights a buggy, visually underwhelming early build but affirms SKATE "feels like it's back."
  • "The build that we're playing off of is buggy as hell. I had to restart my game like six or seven times..." (09:54)
  • "There's something that's just so satisfying about that experience... this game is putting the early in early access." (11:03)
• Mike: Enthusiastic about the core skating, but flags lack of fulfilling multiplayer experiences despite a "shared world."
  • "At its core, it's skate... It is skate at its very fundamental core." (12:11)
  • "There's this weird push and pull... It's a shared open world, but it also feels so solo and lonely." (13:11)
• Core Gameplay: The crew agrees the challenge-completion and trick-repetition loop remains addictive.

Multiplayer & Shared World Disconnection (13:52–16:28)

• Multiplayer structure feels isolated; parties can't truly skate "with" each other unless organizing outside the game.
  • "There is no reason to call this a shared experience..." — Mike (13:57)
  • "It's like we're doing things in the same lobby, but it doesn't feel like we're doing it together." — Blessing (16:17)
• Activities like "showdowns" are limited and poorly integrated, furthering the solitary feeling.

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Art Style, Customization, & Live Service Model

Visual Style & World Design (16:28–18:21)

• Art direction is a shift from gritty realism toward a Sim/Fortnite mix. Mike finds it acceptable, Blessing finds it bland and "sterile."
  • "Kind of Sims meets Fortnite." — Mike (10:56)
  • "There's something about it that feels sterile." — Blessing (11:12)

Game Progression & Content Gating (18:21–22:54)

• Mike hits the cap on available challenges quickly; timers block continued progression, frustrating those eager to grind.
  • "They told me, hey Mike, come back in 11 hours. I hated that." (18:21)
• Monetization: Game is free-to-play, with mostly cosmetic microtransactions. Mike spends money on a jacket but prefers free gear for aesthetics.
  • "It's completely free to play. None of the microtransactions are... needed." (19:40)

Core Loop & Sandbox Elements (22:54–24:29)

• Andy: Newcomer questions; learns SKATE is not about upgrades, but finding tricks, personalizing play, and discovering "dope" spots.
• User-generated content is a vital component—a signature of the series carried forward.

Player Creations & World Impact (24:29–26:41)

• Sandbox builds can clutter areas, echoing other live service games but can be set to private/friends-only.
• Early access is available everywhere, with stable performance minus typical live service connection hiccups.

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Customization & In-Game Progression (29:30–34:57)

• Character Creation: Shallow, according to Mike and Blessing.
  • "90% of the time you're looking at the backside of your skater... but still, I was really let down." — Mike (29:52)
  • "C minus on the character creation... it's pretty bare bones." — Blessing (30:53)
• Cosmetics are the main form of progression; unlocks are mostly for clothing, skateboards, wheels, etc.
• In-game currency mostly feeds loot boxes for cosmetics; variety and excitement of unlocks are debated.
  • "You're kind of doing that where you're getting one, maybe two items in an unboxing... most of the time you're getting a plain white shirt." — Barrett (33:06)
  • Mike argues loot boxes deliver quickly and without duplicates, so he doesn’t mind.

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Notable Features and Missing Elements (35:02–41:39)

Climbing & Locomotion (35:02–36:11)

• Assassin’s Creed-style climbing feels odd but functional and speeds up navigation to skate-spot rooftops.

Music Collection (36:12–36:37)

• Diegetic music can be "collected" from speakers, cars, and boomboxes around the world.
  • "If you hold a button, you can grab that song... then add songs to my soundtrack." — Blessing (36:24)

Social Interaction/Voice Chat (38:08–39:12)

• Game lacks voice chat for now, with proximity chat and party voice set to arrive in a later season.
  • “For such a collaborative experience, no voice chat is odd.” — Mike (38:08)

Multiplayer & "Community" Gaps (39:13–41:39)

• The community aspects feel superficial, mirroring the Destiny Tower or NBA 2K “neighborhood” but lacking depth without robust interaction tools.

Build & Trick Variety (41:23–42:03)

• Missing several tricks and multiplayer modes (Death Race, Own the Spot, etc.) from earlier games, which is disappointing for veterans.

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Comparison, Questions, and Roadmap (42:04–46:28)

• Comparison to racing games: "Tony Hawk is to Forza Horizon as Skate is to Forza Motorsport" (42:03)—arcade vs. sim.
• Roadmap Overview: Upcoming seasons will add voice chat, replay editing, player-created parks, and game modes (see 44:51 for details).
• Most desired features: The crew craves more meaningful multiplayer, social features, private lobbies, robust "create a park" tools, and iconic challenges/events.

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The "Vibe" Problem: Where's the Culture? (46:28–53:30)

• Bland Writing & Voice Acting: The dialogue and characters lack charisma, with some real skaters voicing generic NPCs poorly.
  • “We need to bring in actual voice actors... not monotone delivery for three and a half hours of tutorial stuff.” — Barrett (48:38)
• Absence of Skate Culture: Lack of real brands, authentic music, or recognizable skaters undermines immersion and "sauce."
  • “It feels like it exists in a vacuum where skating exists, but skating culture doesn’t exist.” — Blessing (50:57)
• Missed Opportunities: Calls for more licensed music, Tim Robinson as a voice actor, and a return to Skate's punk, irreverent roots.

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Wishlist & "Magic Wand" Segment (53:31–58:08)

• Crew's Most Wanted:
  • Mike: Private lobbies for up to 40 players, wider game modes, more tricks, user-created parks—“Let me own this open world.”
  • Blessing: Battle royale–esque challenge modes, expanded co-op, deeper interaction.
  • Andy: More authentic culture touches, session-based “one more try” video game magic.
• Multiplayer Ideas: Skate battle royale, obstacle courses, trick-based elimination.
  • “I want Skate Battle Royale. But it’s like fall guys—I want it to be obstacle based.” — Blessing (56:48)
• Content & Culture: Integration of skating legends, classic brands (Etnies, Osiris), and the “punk rock” feel are cited as crucial for the soul of the franchise.

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The Core of SKATE: What Works (58:09–64:57)

• "One More Try" Factor: The challenge system and skating "feel" are magnetic; the urge to master big combos remains the heart of the game.
  • “SKATE is the perfect ‘one more try’ video game.” — Mike (63:02)
• Challenges: Stories of failing and retrying tough trick combos echo what fans love about the series.
  • “I was on this for probably like 20 minutes straight... I was so locked the fuck in.” — Blessing (60:17)
• Physics and Control: New landing mechanics add depth to tricks and stunts.
• Hall of Meat: Fan-favorite injury mode is missing but requested by audience and hosts alike.

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Closing Thoughts (64:23–65:32)

• Overall Sentiment: The core gameplay is strong, but the live service trappings, lack of culture, and social/creative features need rapid improvement.
  • “At its core it is great—around it, it's just early access, and that sucks.” — Mike (64:13)
• Listener Takeaway: Despite obvious flaws and rough edges, the hosts are optimistic—provided SKATE continues evolving and reconnects with its countercultural identity.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Mongo Pushing: "No, you just don't look as cool." — Blessing (00:59)
• On Early Access State: "This game is putting the early in early access." — Blessing (11:03)
• On Multiplayer Disconnect: "There is really no reason to call this a shared experience..." — Mike (13:57)
• On Core Appeal: "At its core, it's Skate. They didn't change it." — Mike (12:11)
• On Customization: "C minus on the character creation... it's pretty bare bones." — Blessing (30:53)
• On Lack of Culture: "It feels like it exists in a vacuum where skating exists, but skating culture doesn’t exist." — Blessing (50:57)
• On "One More Try": "SKATE is the perfect one more try video game." — Mike (63:02)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–09:08: Banter & show intro
• 09:08–13:52: First impressions and bugs
• 13:52–16:28: Multiplayer/shared world discussion
• 16:28–18:21: Art style, world design
• 18:21–22:54: Progression, content gating, microtransactions
• 24:29–26:41: World personalization and early access platform details
• 29:30–34:57: Customization & progression
• 35:02–36:11: Climbing and locomotion
• 36:12–36:37: Music collection mechanic
• 38:08–39:12: Social features and voice chat
• 41:23–42:03: Trick/mode removal disappointments
• 44:51–46:28: Game roadmap/future updates
• 46:28–53:30: Cultural critique, writing, and music
• 53:31–58:08: Feature wishlist and "magic wand" segment
• 58:09–64:97: Core challenge gameplay & wrap-up

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Summary

Kinda Funny’s crew is excited about the bones of SKATE’s return—the satisfying challenge-completion, trick mechanics, and endless “one more try” vibes hold up after a decade away. However, early access is rough, with sterile visuals, minimal customization, and the sense of skateboarding culture (music, real brands, authentic voice) diluted by corporate live service structures and missing features.

The consensus: SKATE’s back, and it feels right, but it needs meaningful multiplayer, cultural personality, and creative tools ASAP to rise above its bland, too-safe shell. If SKATE can fix its social/multiplayer gaps, expand customization, and channel its punk, irreverent roots, the next year could see SKATE reclaim its legendary status among fans.

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Hello, gamers. Welcome to the kind of funny Games cast for September 17, 2025. I'm Andy Cortez and I'm joined by the board sliding bro Blessing. Adio junior. Good day, Andy and Mongo skating. Mike, you seem like someone who would skate Mongo.

[B]

What's mess about that?

[A]

That's messed up.

[C]

We have a Mongo scanner here.

[B]

Stuff about that is that I'm the.

[C]

Oh my God.

[B]

Everybody was so.

[A]

We all made fun of him.

[B]

They. They bullied me into pressing square. They bullied me into.

[C]

He's always been pressing X. And we told him, no, you got to press square X for me. A on controller or on X. But I've been like, no, no, you got to. You got to go over here. And he's like, I always go here.

[B]

Always.

[C]

He's always been Mongo push.

[D]

Wow.

[B]

Which I never even thought about. I never even like really considered that.

[C]

Does it.

[B]

Does it change your gameplay? Like, does it make you faster?

[C]

No, you just don't look as cool.

[A]

Yeah, it's weird. It's kind of weird. It's like it' but like with your right hand. With your right leg and your right arm going forward.

[C]

Here's the challenge. What if you make Mongo pushing cool? Like, you gotta find a way to make it stylish.

[D]

Mike, that's decades of anti Mongo agenda.

[A]

That he's gonna be fighting against. I don't think he can do that.

[B]

When I tell you that, like. Because we were. We were streaming this yesterday, we're playing skate, and a lot of the stream was on my camera and it was like, as soon as my game started, people were like, oh, interesting. Like this person's.

[C]

They were riding them.

[B]

Yeah, they were like. I was like, oh, Mongo interesting. Like in like in kind of like a judgmental way. Like kind of judgmentally, like, like, oh, why are you doing that? Why are you. Why are you doing that? And it got to the point where I looked at Mike and I was like, hey, like, is there a. Is there a way to switch your stance? Like, can I go into my settings? Or whatever? And then finally once I told them the problem, they're like, no, you just press the other button. You just press the other button. I didn't know.

[A]

Yeah, so. Okay. Okay. Fascinating. Well, I can't.

[B]

Like, so people aren't just. Aren't just. People are not pressing X in this video game? Is that what you're telling me?

[C]

Or. No, they. Yeah, they press square and. Or X on the.

[B]

You're just not using that bottom button, the main.

[C]

But I've never had anyone tell me I press that button. I always thought we always press that button on the left.

[B]

Wow, wow, wow.

[A]

A lot of big stuff to learn here.

[B]

We got a lot I talked about.

[A]

I can't wait to get into what the hell these mechanics even are because this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews and and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify or Apple podcasts to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show for a chance to be a part of the show. Submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. Housekeeping. We're an 11 person business all about live talk shows on kind of funny games daily. We mainly talked about Yakuza.

[C]

Yeah, we did.

[A]

The title was, you know, government versus video games. And Mike gave me nothing.

[B]

I tried.

[C]

It's so funny because I took Roger on a walk over there and I was like, Eddie didn't even let me talk during story number one. And like, I appreciate that, but he didn't let me talk.

[A]

I didn't see any inclination that there was a wanting to talk.

[C]

I looked at you, there was no.

[B]

Light in those eyes as the person who practiced.

[C]

That's why I had to start chiving it.

[A]

I was like, he's gonna get nothing from Mike here. I may as well have been looking at the fucking at the wall.

[B]

I feel like Mike's an insightful person.

[C]

I was there.

[B]

I would have. Was ready bless.

[C]

And like he went up, he threw the ball to himself and fucking knocked it out the park. And I was like, all right, he's not pitching to me.

[B]

You went behind the scenes on it. The story number one was gonna be Yakuza. And so like Roger looked at me, he was like, that's not the headline. And I was like, well, like, Black Flag isn't gonna click well. Like, you know, Silent Hill F the first review being out, that's not gonna click well. And then we looked at the doc and we're all like, the government. We're like, that's the one. We gotta lead with this. I'm, I look, I take Roger on.

[C]

The walk, I go, I don't know what just happened there because we went from Andy stealing story number one, then we went into Yakuza where I had Roger talking about 15 minutes and then Barrett talking about Assassin's Creed. I was just present is what I told him. I'm along for the ride.

[A]

I mean, yeah, I just, you know, I was looking at an audience member. I just didn't see a whole lot of. Didn't see a whole lot of.

[C]

You know, when you're at the table, it's a lot of, like, eye contact to let them know, like, I'm in this. Yeah, I might have been staring off at the other.

[A]

I was getting a lot of this. I was getting a lot of this. Of looking at me and going like.

[C]

A lot of, like.

[B]

I get it, I get it. You know, like, people don't understand how hard this is sometimes because it's not like a write up sometimes. If it's like an IGN story, IGN will give you some context so you can cheat a little bit, you know, kind of flow off of the ign. This is straight. I pulled the government document like it was a press release from the White House or some. That I put into the document. And so, like, you just had to roll with it wrong. And you did it. Like, you guys, you did it. You did it.

[C]

Andy.

[A]

If you're a kind of funny member, today's Greg way is no new games for a year. That's the Roger edition. So look out for that one from.

[C]

Mike and you have one to add to your list now.

[A]

Yakuza.

[C]

Yakuza.

[A]

So many options.

[C]

How do we. How do we. How do we play them all? How do we just lock in?

[A]

There's just so long.

[C]

What are really long? 1. Just every day throughout the entire month, we knock them out.

[A]

What I need is. I need the. The power of modders to give me an abridged version.

[B]

Oh, dude.

[C]

Connect them all.

[A]

And I know the fat's great. I know people love the fat. I love the fat. You kidding me? Look at me. I love the fat. But, you know, I would just love to. To get the. I want to be crying in these games because I know these games will.

[D]

Get you emotional fat.

[C]

Then.

[A]

Yeah, it possibly does. Do you need the context to cry?

[C]

I've never loved the fat. Too chewy.

[A]

Oh, I actually. I hate you.

[C]

I cut the fat.

[A]

I mean, I was talking more just, like, fatty stuff, but I. Whenever I eat a piece of fajita and there's like a little like, oh, get that out of my mouth, man.

[B]

You ever eat brisket? Get like, a good piece of fat?

[A]

Oh, I hate it.

[B]

Oh, I mean, I love brisket, but.

[A]

Whenever I get something that's Too gummy. I'm like, that's the best.

[B]

Next time you're eating brisket, cut that part off. Give it to me.

[A]

Okay, I will cut that part off. Take it out of your mouth.

[B]

Me like a bird.

[A]

But before the. Before that, Gregory, that you'll be watching, which is after what's happening on today's Games cast. Mike, I had.

[C]

I have to tell Blessing something really quick.

[A]

Yeah, real quick. Mike will be showing off the top 10 skate spots in Skate. I'm sure we'll talk about a couple of them here. But you'll be streaming that after the stream. Go ahead, Mike.

[C]

Keep this K going. Well, I thought about. Bless.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Because we're talking about, you know, cutting off the fat. You know, food, steaks, food in general. I saw this. I thought about you. Bless. Did you know two days ago, they're making the world record of the largest jollof rice ever?

[B]

I did see this, and I thought.

[C]

I was like, oh, I was watching.

[B]

The video about this.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. No, I'm like, that excites me. I love that Jollof rice is out here breaking records. My favorite was. I saw that and I was like, wow, that's really neat. And I look at the comments, and the comments are like, there's a war going on in London. I was like, wait, we gotta. We gotta stop doing this.

[C]

All right.

[B]

Like, let me live my happy jollof rice world. And, like, I can acknowledge that, you know, the world's on fire. But, like, let me. Let me have a moment of solace.

[A]

I'm not gonna. I'm not trying to attack you right now, Bless. Yeah, but, like, I love rice, and I would love for you to help me experience your culture.

[B]

Yeah, we can do jollof rice.

[A]

Because I love rice. I love rice of all sorts.

[B]

Dude, you love jollof rice.

[A]

Oh, my God.

[B]

I gotta learn how to. I gotta learn how to make it. That's the problem is that I always just order it. Okay. But for you and y' all learn.

[A]

I'm going to learn how to make my. My grandma salsa.

[B]

But what we should do at. Kind of funny, we should have a day. We should have a cultural exchange day where we.

[A]

I like that.

[B]

Make our own dishes.

[A]

Show and tell from our, like, own.

[B]

Different, like, you know, upbringings or cultures. And then bring them in a nice little potluck. A nice little potluck. And we make it either the stream or the KF podcast or something.

[D]

Mike, what are you buying to bring in?

[C]

I'm going to bring my mom's just basic microwave cases. Quesadilla cuz it's bomb nice. Okay, just two tortillas of cheese.

[B]

The food for my culture, the quesadilla. I'll bring.

[C]

I'll bring microwave quesadilla. Make sure you remember that.

[A]

I'll bring salsa and the banana bread pop tarts Spirit man bangers.

[B]

Dude that banana bread part pop tarts.

[A]

They are just bangers. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney the Psalm Twining. Today we're brought to you by Shady Rays and Factor, but we'll tell you about them later. For now, let's begin with with topic of the show. Skate Early Access is live. We know there's a lot of people who've been playing it beforehand and all those kind of NDA testing sessions, but the whole crew got to stream it yesterday. It was Barrett, it was Bless, it was Mike. And then last night Mike played a bit more on stream.

[C]

I was shooting for seven hours uninterrupted. One hour was interrupted because the servers went down. So I think I played a solid five. Five more hours. It says I'm at nine hours. Well minus one, I'm at eight hours.

[A]

Okay. The highly anticipated skate. Obviously this is something that people have been looking forward to for a long time. A follow up to Skate3. Let me just read the Steam description right here. Experience improve flick. It controls the rich physics based skateboarding gameplay that provides those only in skate moments and off board exploration for full freedom in an online multiplayer world of San Vansterdam. I'd like to talk all about this. I want to start with Blessing though, since Mike played the most of it. Blessing, what were your thoughts with Skate yesterday?

[B]

Yeah, I think starting off with it, there's a list of things to say. The voice acting is whack.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The build that we're playing off of is buggy as hell. I had to restart my game like six or seven times yesterday during the stream because my missions just wouldn't populate to the next thing. And then I'd restart and then they would show me what the mission is. The art style honestly isn't my favorite. I don't really like looking at this game that much.

[A]

There's only characters or environments.

[B]

Both, both, both. I think the overall art style, I'm like, I'm kind of like on right. Like it's not something I look at. I'm like, man, I love looking at this game.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Kind of seems kind of bland. And also they, they shifted it a little bit from what we originally had with, like, the original Skate trilogy, it.

[A]

Was a bit more realism focused the first time. This is a bit more stylized.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

A little bit more stylized for. Stylized in a way that, like, feels less. It just put the style and stylized. You know what I mean? Like, it feels. Feels almost like. Let's just make it a bit more animated for the sake of, like, giving almost like a fortnighty feel. It doesn't go.

[C]

It's not.

[A]

It's not Rematch.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

It's not the way rematch looks.

[B]

It's not like the rematch stylized, right? It is. Mike just mentioned. Yeah. Like Sims meets Fortnite.

[A]

Gotcha.

[B]

I think there's a list of things I can say as far as even the onboarding and what this game gets wrong, but at the end of the day, oh, I just like skating.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And that's kind of my takeaway. That's my takeaway from the first. I. I can't wait for Mike to get into it because I've only played three and a half hours. Like, all my game time is recorded on stream, the one that we did yesterday. But at the end of the day, when you get into the core of the game and it is the challenge of, hey, do this specific trick in this specific way while nailing, like, a grind, a flip trick, and a grab. Oh, and I'm just repeating that over and over and over again until I get it right. There's something that's just so satisfying about that experience that I love this. This game is putting the early and early access. And so it does feel a bit like, man, I need you to polish this up. I need a bit more liveliness. Like, there's something about it that feels sterile. There's something about it that feels like it feels far off from a final release. But I think there's a core here that is undeniably man, Skate feels like it's back.

[A]

Awesome. Sounds like. Mike, what do you think?

[C]

Yeah. I am so happy about this. This is my most highly anticipated game of the year. This is one that I have circled. I've talked about a lot of. Like, this one. They need to land this, right? And I'm really happy to say last night I tweeted out it's got the juice, and it is a lot of fun because at its core, it's skate, right? If you love skate 1, 2, or 3, guess what? When you play this and you're on the sticks and you're just enjoying your time doing challenges, skating around the world, it is an absolute blast. It Is skate at its very fundamental core. They didn't change it. It's not anything crazy. It's just fun. And everything off the board as well is nice, right? The added movement, the parkour of climbing up the sides of buildings to find new skate spots. It's all a good time. I never had a bad time while I was actively playing it. Now there is some question marks that I have, right? We've moved into this live service world that they're trying to live off of. It's an early access release, so it's not a 1.0. It's not a full traditional product that I'm used to with Skate three, Skate two and onward, right? And so there's this weird push and pull of while I'm playing it, I'm having a blast. But also while I'm playing it, I'm also saying, what are these decisions, right? It is a shared open world, but it also feels so solo and lonely because when I do the challenges, it is just me. When we do the challenges together, it's not like I'm watching Bless do his run. We're doing it at the same time. When I do my run and we complete it as one team, I still only see my replay. So it's like, yeah, Bless is taking part in the activity, but I'm not seeing Bless at all. Besides him just whip past me.

[B]

Yeah, we're partied up, me, Barrett and Mike. And I don't understand what was the. What the point was of us partying.

[C]

Up unless we stop and we get out of the challenge and we say, here's the session spot. I want you to smash this rail. And we go one at a time watching. There is really no reason to call this a shared experience because I never see you besides you climbing up the side of the building and blurring past me, right? And so there's this weird give and take of. There is no skates, there is no own the spot. There is no of these, like, multiplayer experiences that you know together. Except for odd small pop ups that I never got into. Because, mind you, you can only squat up with four people, but the world is populated with like 20, 40 plus. I don't know the real number. But every now and then you would look at your map when you would finally get out of the blur. That is just having too much fun. You'd finally look at your map and be like, there's a showdown happening right here. But only four people can enter the showdown. And if you don't click on it, if you're not the first person there. You've missed it. So I have not experienced any shared fun, co op fun besides inviting Bless or some of our friends from the audience to join me and essentially complete the mission for me. So it's a very odd shared world that feels very solo. But skate to me has always kind of been solo of like, I just want to skate the world. I would love to bring in my friends and do certain things and I think it has that. But at its core of like what you were doing moment to moment, it's not that it's like, hey, we want you to get there, but right now just do all these challenges.

[A]

Are you not seeing your friends wipe.

[C]

Out or with how fast you are going? Andy, the things that you are focused on, the rails, the tricks, the moment to moment, you're not really looking over at blessing doing that unless you full on stop, get off the board and watch.

[A]

Is there a, is there a moment where all three of you at the same time could go down a ramp simultaneously together and you would see each other on both sides of you and then launch off of this ramp and do a move all and you're looking and you see your friends to your side jumping with you doing a trick as you are doing this trick as well.

[C]

100. Yeah.

[A]

Okay. Okay.

[C]

100. Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

It's not really organized though, right? Like I feel like you would do that if you looked at your friends.

[A]

And went, all right, let's three, two, one, go.

[B]

Yeah. Three, two, one, go. Like let's all do this together.

[A]

I was, I guess I was a little bit just confused as to what the online portion was. It felt a lot more limiting seeing each other.

[B]

It's like we're, we're doing things in the same lobby, I guess at the same time, but it doesn't feel like we're doing it together. Yeah, I think that's the, that's the disconnect on top of that. Yeah, okay.

[C]

Yeah, just to keep going because I got a lot here. I'm sorry, I'll keep it a little bit tight. On top of that, the stylized world, I, I like it. Right. I like the colorful world that they've chose. I do think they nailed another very detailed, awesome open world. Right. This is what skate is known for, these giant open worlds that have all the detail, all these different skater friendly spots that you would want. They have that right. They introduce it poorly from a, a weird, awkward app that talks to you. A couple of like really slow, tedious onboarding missions that you wish would Just kind of speed up a little bit faster. But the world that they have at its core really does play into a. Hey, you could get on your board and go anywhere, and you were always going to have something there to just find a session on to hit really quick. As you're going to point A to point B. It is very well done. The characters that look kind of sim slash fortnighty, I'm all right with it. Right. It's a weird world that we live in of, like, that is kind of the norm that we look at. When I look at old Skate 2 and Skate 3 footage, it's like, yeah, that does. That looks like it was made in 2008.

[B]

That's true.

[C]

It's a different world now. It's, like, way cleaner. It looks good. And of course, then you'll get into microtransactions in the storefront of adding all the different things that play well with these kind of characters. On top of that, I hit the point where I didn't have anything else to do. I played enough in the game, day one that I've completed every challenge that I'm allowed to do. And. And they told me, hey, Mike, come back in 11 hours. I hated that. I wanted to keep the skate going. I was in a zone of like, I'm completing challenges. I want you to give me and show me more. And that is the problem with these early access releases of, well, we're slowly giving that to you. So you'll come back tomorrow. Well, we're still building out X, Y and Z. So you're not going to go over to the fourth area yet until next part of the season. Right.

[A]

We're big content, light at the moment.

[C]

Here, ready to go. And so when they put the roadblock on me, it sucked at first. That was a. A gut punch of, like, what do you mean? There's nothing more to do. I'm here for the skate experience. And then it was like, okay, pause. Go to different skate spots. Have fun with your friends. Go skate around the world. Enjoy yourself. That was fun. But it wasn't the skate experience I was looking for as I was riding all these spots, looking for more. And so I am very high on skate. I think they nailed the skate at its true fundamental core. It is very good. It is completely free to play. None of the microtransactions are screaming, buy me. Buy me in any way, shape or form that anyone should be complaining about. Right? It's like, there's a Vans T shirt, there's a Thrasher jacket, Those are all $9 or 27 bundle. None of that is needed. Right. It doesn't elevate your skater in any way, shape or form. It's just a unique way to show off yourself. They have plenty of loot boxes that you earn with in game credits that you'll get all the cool T shirts that you want. Well, here's the thing. It's wild. I gave them $20. I bought a $9 Thrasher all white varsity jacket. I wore that for about an hour and proceeded to take it off and wear more of the free gear. Right now, my character is built with nothing but free gear that I think looks better than what I was rocking with.

[B]

You're getting freaker that you're liking the look.

[C]

Yes, I like. I, I mean it's all very basic, but like, yeah, I like the free gear better than what I'm currently rocking with the microtransaction stuff. I want.

[A]

I want to. I want to pump the brakes. Yeah, I pump the brakes because I don't. I don't even know what this game is yet.

[B]

Have you played Skate? Like not what but a previous skate.

[A]

Like, I think I rented it one time and I just like, you would love it. I just don't really remember what the core function like. I've obviously, I know Tony Hawk. I know the mission structure there. I know that this is, you know, you have your skate parks and then every skate park has its own list of objectives to do. Skate has always been more of a.

[B]

Like, it's like a sandbox simulation.

[A]

It's always felt more like a Zen out type game.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And I. And how that translates to an open world game has me even more confused. Just give me a quick little rundown. What are you doing when you, when you open this game up? What are you sort of faced with as like, here's what I want to do today in skate?

[B]

Well, I mean, you're given a mix of mainline objectives to do, which are so far in my experience have mostly been onboarding things of here's how these mechanics work, here's how to ollie, here's how to do like the quick drop items. So. So that you can kind of build your own skate scenario where you can do like put down your own ramps and stuff like that right in your meeting different characters as you go. But I think the core of the game, I'd say are more in the challenges which are spread out across the map. Like, think about a Ubisoft open world when you hit that map menu and you see like the Icons all over the place. A lot of those icons are going to be challenges that you go to. And like, there's a variety of things. They have like, hall of Meat stuff, which I don't think they call it hall of Meat here. I think they just call it stunt challenges. But you have those, you have more like semi pro. I'm going to do the specific trick challenge or I'm going to do like a score challenge kind of thing, right? Where in this area I'm trying to do a. I'm trying to get to a specific score or I'm trying to hit the objectives they give me in the specific area, which might be, all right, go down these stairs and do a flip trick and a grab and a manual all in one combo sort of thing. And so you're doing these challenges and you are achieving them. And I don't even know what I'm building towards. I think, I guess you're leveling up is the main thing.

[C]

Yeah, you're leveling up in each area. Each area has its own rep and level, its own progression. Of course, you're earning in game. In game credits to then buy cosmetics through their in game stuff like that.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

But there is no level. You're not getting a higher ollie, you're not going faster. There's no leveling. Right. And also at its fundamental core, it is the true skateboarding experience. And it's about the style, it's about the ste. As the kids will call it. It's about that moment to moment of finding a hidden gem of a spot and just having a session with your friends or yourself and doing the coolest tricks. Right? You don't have to just do the challenges. You can go find the love and the fun of that. Of like, man, I just hit the dopest tail slide on this down rail. Or, oh, man, I just did this sick pop. Shove it down a flight of stairs. Like, yeah, it's like the moment to moment of just having fun and playing the game is what the core is.

[A]

It becomes the GTA of I'm just gonna, let's just shoot our car up this ramp or whatever.

[B]

And I think the thing that's nice about skate is that, like, you're not really unlocking new, like, abilities or it's not really, like mechanical stuff that you're upgrading. It really is mostly cosmetics and you're unlocking new challenges to do. And so, like, at the start it's like, okay, cool, I have, I'm gameplay wise. I got everything that I need here, you know, What I mean, like, I got my kickflips, I got my pop, shove it. I got my grab. I can do flips, I can do all these things. And it really is for me the ultimate sandbox thing of oh, me, Barrett and Mike are in the same world and we're just going around just doing our own thing. We're just, we're just going around. This is, we're watching right now video of me trying to do this earn us or earn enough score, which you can see in the top left, right. But it's me just doing grinds and fucking flipping and doing and doing these tricks. This is kind of the bulk of the game.

[C]

And the cool part is like the progression of skates has become, hey, you do what you want in this world. Here's a bunch of user generated content or really here's the tools to create your own stuff. And so the big one in Skate 3 was the user generated content. They're going to keep that going here in this one, right? Of like there is what you're earning as well. Bless along with the cosmetics is, hey, here's new items to build off of and use in the world. And so I can call up Baird and bless and be like, yo, I just found this really cool spot. Let's come over and have a session here. And then blessing can be like, you know what would take this over the edge? What if I put a ramp here and he can instantly drop a ramp into the world and we can now add and change and develop our own spots just like that on the fly, right?

[A]

Does any of that start to look really goofy at some point I was.

[C]

Running into other people's stuff and it started to feel like once human was like, wow, everybody's house is in the starting area. Like, get out of my way. Yeah, you can turn that off and you can have it to like your friends only as well. So like you can kind of detail it how you want. But it is cool to see like what other kids are putting down and what their thought process was. A lot of it is garbage. But there are the true skate heads who are like really finding a way to make that spot even cooler.

[A]

So you. This is only early access on PC, right? No, everyone else as well.

[B]

Everywhere.

[C]

Okay, this is a full release. What did coming out in early.

[A]

What did everybody play on.

[B]

PC was.

[C]

She was on Xbox when I played with him last night.

[A]

How did performance look?

[C]

Good? I had no problems. It was literally the Internet connection, right? It was the A.T. when I got on at 5:15 last night, they had to take down the servers. They took us off for 30 minutes for a quick server fix and then we re queued. Queue times were very fast. We all seem to have gotten back in. Yeah, it wasn't 30 minutes. It was more like five, two minutes at most. It felt like. So we all jammed back in there. It seems to be a lot of like your normal open world live service connection issues that I didn't experience much with Destiny, but I would, I would put it like a destiny thing of like you finish a mission and you're expecting more things to pop up. And it's saying, hey, this should click here and it's not. And so then you have to bounce out of the game, restart the game. The connection seems to work and everything clicks back on.

[B]

Yeah. My biggest fear was that in my many times restarting this game because my next mission wouldn't pop up the right way, that I would just get stuck out of it and it wouldn't let me back in. It let me back in every, every single time. And yeah, like the game ran smooth. It ran fine.

[C]

Right.

[B]

Like I. Outside of the Internet, like the connective stuff, it seems like it's pretty well put together.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

Yeah. I never felt like I was having a problem. Right. When you see others, right. The world is populated with 20, 40 other people. Sometimes they're freaking out next to me. But really, when it came down to my skate moments, I never was impacted. Right. My gameplay felt smooth the entire time.

[A]

Awesome. I can't wait to dive deeper into skate early access after a word from.

[E]

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[A]

Let's talk about some features in skate because I caught a little bit of a glimpse of the stream yesterday and it was really only the part where Barrett was creating a skater. And I love customizing in games. How deep or shallow are the customization features in skate?

[B]

I mean, I'd love to ask Mike because Mike during the first Mike was.

[A]

Uptight for the first hour of the stream.

[C]

Yeah, I wish it was more in depth, Andy. It is not. And here's the thing about this is I complain about it not being as deep as I want it to be. 90% of the time you're looking at the backside of your skater. Sure, right. Like when you're playing the video game, you're only looking at the backside of them. And so as much as I want to complain, I do have to realize I'm not looking at them as much. But it is also a social experience. Do you want to get off your board, you are going to do the emotes. You are going to stand next to bless and see his cool outfit.

[B]

Right.

[C]

And so I was really let down. I thought it would be a little bit deeper, I guess I wasn't expecting much. Right. Like you think of the sports games that we play, it's not that crazy. And so I was expecting more hairstyles, I was expecting more body types or more. A little bit fun stuff to do, but you can do. I'll give it a B minus. C plus. B minus.

[A]

Okay. Wow.

[B]

B minus.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Because it's like they do give you a lot that you can play with on the body side things, but, like, there's just not a lot there.

[B]

Yeah, I'm probably like a C minus on the character creation side. Right. Like, it's pretty bare bones to Mike's point.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

They give you enough to where you can sort of create something that's an approximation of what you want to look like. Right. I was kind of impressed, honestly, when during one of the shared challenges that me, Barret and Mike did, at the end of it, they'll show you the different players and I saw Barret's character, I was like, oh, that's Barret's character. That looks like Barrett.

[A]

Cool.

[B]

And it wasn't like, that looks exactly like Barret, but it was like, that looks close enough to where if you showed me this character randomly, I'm like, that looks like Barret. You know what I mean? So I think it gets that right. And yeah, I also think that this isn't the game that you need the most fine detail on as far as creating your character and to the outfit thing. Right. Like, there's definitely like a bare bones ness to the amount of outfits they give you, but it's very obvious of, oh, well, we want to make it so that you're earning the cosmetics and stuff. Right. Like, when we first paired up in the same lobby, I looked at Mike and Mike was wearing the same crop top that I was wearing. I was like, God damn it. You know, like, that was really disappointing.

[A]

Because it felt like showing up trying to be individual. Right?

[B]

Yeah. I was like, man, I'm fuck with the crop top. You know, this is my thing. I'm making this my thing. And then Mike shows up, he wearing the same. And I was like, well, that needs.

[A]

To be a real life scenario.

[C]

One of us has to change.

[B]

And I did. I went. I changed to a tank top. And then I didn't like the tank top. So I was like it, I'll just do the crop top it. But you know, I think that's one of those things where, hey, like they have to give you some carrot on the stick to chase and here they, they're choosing cosmetics. And so you're going to have that be the bare bones thing.

[C]

It has to be the cosmetics. There's nothing else, Right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

You're not chasing player skill because we're not adding anything to that. Right. And as much as it boards. Yeah. I mean, that comes down to cosmetics. Right.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

The boards, the color, the grip tape on top. Right. The stickers that you can add, the wheels, the trucks on the bottom, those are all things that you can add, you can purchase, you can get. Right.

[D]

And you can get it in a variety of ways, which I, I find very frustrating already. And I, I know I should have had this expectation going into a live service thing.

[B]

Right.

[D]

But like the in game currency that you get, from what I understand, can only be used to open loot boxes. So you're, you're kind of doing that where you're getting one, maybe two items in an unboxing where most of the time you're getting a plain white shirt or a different color of that same plain shirt. And I think in like our first three and a half hours, I unlocked one board and it was just a purple variant of the basic wooden board that I got. And so I think in terms of that stuff, it's very frustrating just because, like, you know, the other skate experiences, you know, like, I'm, I'm looking to, you know, yeah, I gotta earn and unlock things, but that is coming at a quicker pace. And I just, I think that is infinitely frustrating for a game like this to. To have that live service kind of shoved in there.

[C]

Yeah. Aspect, I'll give a little more detail on like 8 hours in how that feels. Right. Because at first you are like, well, it's my player. I want to customize it the way I want to. As Barrett say, it's like, well, I'm earning this currency. Let me just pick from the wall of items and I, I'll tell you what I want. Right. But at the end of the day, you are earning so much coins here that like the loot boxes give like the name of like, oh, there's a chance or maybe I'll get dupes. There's 10 items in the loot box. You're going to earn all those 10 items pretty quick. So I never felt bad about it. There is a lot there, right. As well of like the hours that you'll put in. I unlocked four different loot boxes in area one, two or three in area two that all have 10 items, 12 items, 15 items. So there was a lot there. I do agree with Ben. I wish it was more like, hey, walk into Zoomies. You pick your style and do that. Right. But I'm earning enough XP and credits that it never felt like, oh, this is doom and gloom especially. There's no dupes as well. So when you're on item 7 of 11, you know, you're almost done with this box.

[A]

Okay. Any other features we can get into aside from customization?

[B]

I'll bring up climbing. Climbing is something that they have like Assassin's Creed climbing in this game, which is fucking hilarious, but also really works. At first I was kind of put off by it because I was like, why is this in the game? But it does help you navigate the world a bit easier. And, like, I don't know, there's something about it that's just neat as far as the locomotion of it of getting to like a. They'll have these buildings that specifically are made for, oh, here's a path that you can get up because you see a challenge up there. So we're going to make it easier for you to get higher. Yeah. This exact kind of texture. You see this kind of all over the place. You can see the plants and then this, I don't know, hexagonal artistic design on the side of the building. I don't know what to call it architecture. But, yeah, they have a lot of these climbing spots around, and I like it a lot. Another thing I think to bring up as far as features is this grab a song thing. That feels new. Right? Like, so they have a lot of diegetic music playing. So you might be at a skate park and there's a speaker, or you might have a car that's driving by that's playing music or boom box here and there. Yeah, like. Like that.

[A]

What about a Beats pill? Anybody got. Yes, pills.

[C]

Not.

[B]

Not branded. But, like, I definitely saw something that was definitely a beat.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And if you go up to it, you'll have like a little circular icon and if you hold a button, you can grab that song, which will allow you to collect that song. And then it'll go from being diegetic to then playing as part of your playlist.

[A]

I like that.

[B]

And so you get like a little visual effect and then all of a sudden that song is playing. And I had like maybe eight or nine of those in My three hours of playing of like, oh, damn, the car's driving by. Let me chase after the car and grab that song real quick. It feels like I'm just aiming in real time.

[A]

Gotcha. That's neat.

[B]

Yeah, that was another one where at first I was like, oh, interesting. And then by the time I finished playing, I was like, I kind of like it. I kind of like that as a weird collect a thong thing to then add songs to my soundtrack.

[A]

I am kind of bummed about the customization because when EA is using Frostbite, one of the benefits of them using Frostbite and Frostbite was a very dodgy kind of sketchy engine early on. That's what caused a lot of problems in Andromeda and development. And people, a bunch of the devs are like, let's just use unreal. Let's use something that we know. But they wanted to kind of like work from within and kind of continue to work on this engine. And one thing I loved about the customization, Dragon Age Veil Guard was that the. Obviously the customization was amazing in Dragon Age Veil Guard, but it was using a lot of tech that was being pushed from EAFC and vice versa. And so it's like a lot of these different studio teams are sharing the tech within studios and going, well, we made the hair actually super sick in EAFC and the Dragon Age team going, oh, we would love to implement that shit into our game. How do we get that and kind of work together or whatever. It bums me out that the customization did look kind of so sparse and empty because of how amazing the customization was in valeguard. So that does kind of, kind of make me sad wishing that they would continue to. Let's keep on working with Field Guard and working with other studios, you know.

[C]

For a such a. If we talk about features and things like that, for such a collaborative experience, no voice chat is odd. For me as someone who's always on Discord, rarely ever in the game chat, it's not that big of a deal. But I know the, you know, the general audience now, especially with the push of proximity chat and us returning the game chat, it is an odd one of like, what do you mean? I can't be like, hey, Blessing over there, let's put this down. Or hey, Slappy, let's work together and have some fun. It is very much of like bare bones, basic communication tools.

[B]

You need to add proximity chat to this over the course of this. Right? Like, I feel like for a game that is about being in Huge lobbies with other people. You need ways to interact with those other people.

[C]

You would love to because like, you know, skate is the true like one to one feel of being at the ski resort or at the skate park of like there's a group of people here and we're all together watching somebody. We're riding together, we're experiencing this and like nothing cooler than banging the boards on the side of the coping when somebody does something sick. Clapping it up. Like.

[A]

Is it similar to the NBA?

[C]

My part. To the. My part Community. Yeah. The neighborhood. Yeah, it's kind of like that. They have pretty basic emotes. There's just. I guess there's just something missing when it comes to the collaborative feature to make it really feel like we're all a community doing this. It very much. It's a solo game that wants to be shared experiences, but it's just not quite there yet.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Gotta find a way to sort of bridge that gap.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I. It's. It sounds like what you're explaining is whenever you see other players, maybe that's like the Destiny Tower experience when you see people kind of running around.

[B]

But then.

[A]

But then when you're out doing missions, it's just kind of you by yourself with maybe your two homies if you.

[C]

Invited them or when you go to the hot spots. It's. Yeah. It's like the tower has the appearance of the two skate shops that you unlock things and level up at. There's the mass. Everybody's there running in circles doing dumb things. When you go to the hot spots, you'll see five to 10 people session it out. Because we know this is the coolest spot in skate. So everyone's there and it would be fun of like what if there was a game chat where all of a sudden we were like, yo, let's build this together. Hey, what are you doing? Let's throw down. You know, would be more fun.

[A]

I. I mentioned and asked the question does. Do these worlds look kind of weird or awkward at all with other player creations and things like that? And my. I guess my brain immediately goes to what happens the next time you log on. Are those structures still up?

[B]

Oh I see.

[A]

Like is how do we know what server like it? If somebody puts down a ramp in a spot and you're like oh well you. I was gonna like do some in that kind of area, but a random. A random player put up a ramp. Is that up for your. The rest of your PlayStation or when you log in next, is that now gone? Because maybe they're not on your server anymore. I think that's maybe like way too much of a technical Imagine it's gone. Okay. Endless Stark says now they disappear.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean I even had stuff that I put down then started a mission and it disappeared when I was trying to play that mission.

[B]

Right, that makes sense.

[C]

Yeah. So there. There's not much of that for sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Another one missing a lot of tricks. It's very odd of like Skate three was the ultimate peak skate experience. Everything that you could ask for from different game modes like Death Race Skates on the spot, all this stuff to then trick wise.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Being able to grab and then finger flip the grab and then put it back underneath your feet. That's not here. It's odd that we've taken away things that we've already had.

[A]

I'm going to make a. What are we doing to make a little comparison right here? Tony Hawk is to Forza Horizon as Skate is to Forza Motorsport.

[B]

Oh, okay.

[A]

More authentic. Yeah, I can see it more like grounded in reality where Horizon is more arcadey and Tony Hawk was kind of more arcadey. This always felt like. No, that's the one where if you're a skater you will enjoy this more than playing Tony Hawk. Yeah, that's just always kind of the vibe that I got.

[D]

I always liken it to Guitar Hero and Rock Band where Guitar Heroes more focus on the high score arcadey experience. And then Rock Band is more of like a social experience that feels a bit more authentic even though it's like technically the same kind of gameplay.

[B]

But yeah, Marquis in chat says Tony Hawk is more need for Speed, which I think I aligned with. I think there's something to skate.

[A]

I was gonna say need for Speed first. I wasn't sure if that was the right.

[B]

The gameplay structure of Skate. I. I think you're right as far as like the Sim versus Arcada.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But Skate is actually pretty analogous to Forza Horizon just in terms of the gameplay loop. You know, like you're in this open zone, you are going to these, doing these challenges that are spread across the map. And it is like you kind of having that like simish gameplay within these challenges or whatever. But like I think the way that you are partnering up with friends, the way that you exist within this open world feels actually a lot like Forza Horizon. Whereas Tony Hawk just feels like such a arcade thing that I'll Yeah. Almost look at a Need for Speed or like a like burnout or something to be like okay, no, this is the Tony Hawk right here.

[A]

I want to get to some super chats right now, but I want to ask you all a question to hopefully have you all stew on during the super chat reading. And the question I want to ask is, what do you want next? If you could look at EA and say, put this at the top of the priority list, what would it be? And get your super chats in as well for anybody out there who's getting into skate. But I want to read a super chat here from. We have a birthday tax from Ryan15. Thank you for your generosity and happy birthday to you, Ryan. Appreciate the love and support. I also have a super chat from Trevor who says, andy, next time you're in the Austin area, if you haven't been, go to interstellar barbecue in Cedar Park. Thank you for the five dollar super chat. Whenever I do go to Austin, I don't have a whole lot of time to venture out. The usual spots are Pluckers. Number one, you go to Pluckers, you get that spicy lemon pepper. And then the next day via 313. And then the next day you're just your brains out because you've just been eating so much. But I will consider that because I do vibe with. I do vibe with Cedar Park. Let's see here we have Gerardo is cool who says, hey, just want to say what's up? And stay handsome, y'.

[C]

All. What up, big dog?

[A]

Thank you. Head out of though. Appreciate you. Have you all stewed?

[C]

Yeah. So I sent Barrett over to Assets, the skate early access road map that we can kind of take a look at. Right. Of course, in season one, you'll be introduced to the skate pass, which will be your battle pass to play and earn. During that you'll have a skate a ween maple harvest kind of seasonal events. If you go down to season two in December 2025, you'll have party voice chat added in there. Replay editor improvements. Right. It's all about getting the footy.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

You gotta get the food prepared to get mad at me. But that is something like skate back in the day understood that like they had something here and it was very social at its core of. It might be solo blessing doing that. But like, like skating and sharing is so social of like, well, I got to grab this clip that I just absolutely nailed. I need to create this dude. I want to be the video editor for Shaun White. Let me do that. And they said, well, hold up. We can do that. We can figure that out.

[B]

Skate 3 was ahead of its time. I think way ahead of its time as far as the social and sharing features. And that's something that I think gave me a lot of faith going into this new skate of what it can do to really, I think, take over and become the social game that a lot of people are coming to in the way that you see so many people play Fortnite, because it is. That's the game that we hang out in. That's the game that, you know, has really taken advantage of what video games have turned into over time as far as what the social aspects are. I think skate has an opportunity to do a lot of that stuff. And I think the social thing is priority number one. If they already have the video editing stuff so you can get the footy and do all that stuff, they got to expand that. They got to make it so that I can edit vertical videos and export it directly to TikTok.

[D]

I love that they need to do that.

[A]

I want to say this real quick. Skate a Ween sucks. It should be like Ollie Ween or.

[B]

Ollie Ween is great.

[A]

Like Skate of Ween is just like a dumb name.

[D]

They're already not the best with all of their terminology in the game like this. This level of working in doesn't surprise me. And working in skate stuff into Halloween, which I think is personally what I would want next, is just an overhaul in writing and voice acting. From my understanding, they brought in actual pro skaters to do to voice some of these characters that are constantly in your ear and you can tell. And like, here's the thing is like the. The charm of Tony Hawk was like. Yeah, like, especially when you started getting story modes in like Pro Skater 4 and Underground and stuff. They were doing the same thing. They were bringing in pro skaters, but they were on a level that was charming of voicing themselves where like some of them might be flat, but they still brought in their personality because you felt like those lines were actually written for them. Whereas these pro skaters are coming in to voice fictional characters and are being made to say jargon that they probably don't say on a day to day basis. And so just I'm listening to this dude named Slappy deliver the most monotone about footy and skate eyes and all of the stuff that I'm like, it makes me want to bang my head against a wall. And I think it's like, we need to bring in actual voice actors because I think these like, I like the idea right here. Yeah, we got two right here.

[B]

Come on, come on.

[D]

And like it's still going to be a level of cheesy. But it's, it's not going to be monotone delivery for three and a half hours of tutorial stuff. And then the other thing is like, yeah, someone in Chat brought it up. Like Tim Robinson should have been in this game.

[C]

Oh, I think it's such a weird.

[D]

Choice to like, like have him be.

[C]

A part of a huge part of.

[D]

The marketing push for this game and he is just nowhere in it. And it's like he should be the weird AI voice. That's a good guiding you along. It should be him to be Coach.

[C]

Frank's long lost cousins.

[D]

And also the music, like it's almost there. It's all like, you know, they've gotten stuff. They've got Turnstile in it. They've got car seat headrests and stuff.

[A]

What song from Turnstile do they have? Chat.

[D]

It's something off their last album, I believe.

[A]

The.

[D]

The one. The Pink Cloudy looking album.

[A]

Right.

[D]

I forget what that one's called.

[A]

Never Enough.

[D]

Yeah, no, the, the one before Never Enough.

[A]

Oh, Glow on.

[D]

Yeah, I think it's something from Glow.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

They've got some solid stuff. But then, you know, speaking to what Blessing was talking about with the music collecting, it's like half of it is like brand safe stuff that's not even credited by artists but credited by Universal. And it's just like very generic stuff that I think might have been recorded for the game. And it's just all just very weird. And we, we also overhaul the, the writing of the game because it's just, it's very bad.

[C]

Yeah. Gone are the days. As I look at this, three of the characters, Shingo, Slappy and Izzy are all real life skaters, but they are not portrayed. So gone are the days of like Robin Big Black showing up on your.

[A]

Screen like, yo, that was the dude.

[C]

All of a sudden having Tony Hawk, you know, all the crew show up and like, you know that they're, they're skaters at heart. So they're going to suck at this. But it's fun and it's funny. But like we've also kind of changed in the world of like if you're not a die hard skater, you probably can't name 10 skateboarders right now here in the world, right. Of like the modern Nigeria, Houston. Right.

[D]

So, but that, but that was the thing about skate and even Tony Hawk for people who are on the outside looking in, that's how a lot of them learned about pro skaters. So just fucking lean. If you're going to bring in pro skaters Just have them be themselves and don't write weird like brand spaces to the corporate speak that you think is skateboarding speak.

[B]

You know, I think that's for me, one of my bigger complaints about it, right? I think that's when we're talking about the overall aesthetic of the game. One of the things I've written down for what I wanted us to stew on was the better voice acting, but ends up on top of that brands like more brands. And I think really what it is is I need more connections to real life culture. I think the game feels so sterile and so sauceless because it feels like they went out of their way to not reference anything in this video game. Like it feels like it exists in a realm, in a vacuum, in a vacuum where skating exists, but skating culture doesn't exist.

[A]

Okay?

[B]

And I think you need to take a lot of that culture and inject this into the game. I need more of the clothing brands, I need the real life skaters. I need more music that I recognize that I'm like, oh man, that's some skater shit right there. I think those are the things that are going to add the sauce to this game.

[A]

I got a little bit excited because at one point, maybe a week ago, I saw the official account retweet an old ass tweet from Tyler the creator saying I want a new skate. And I was like, and I was like, oh shit, is this them like kind of hinting like, oh wow, is he going to be in the game in some way, shape or form?

[C]

Early access, more money and then God over there at ea, they should be already paying for all this. We're not returning to skate and not having a vision. They should have known all this from the beginning.

[D]

But like, isn't that part of their push as well is to like try to use less money for stuff that's outside of their ip. So like they're trying to focus less on licensed stuff like Star wars and all of this other stuff. They're pulling back on that to focus on their core thing. And they name skate under their core IP that they can focus on. But the part of what makes skate skate is the license stuff that it seems like they're barely going to spend any money on because you know, you can use in game currency to maybe buy, get a couple of, I imagine not brand specific stuff that might look cool or you can spend real money on a vans collaboration that's like what, 20 bucks? And that's like, it's like Vans and Thrasher and those are the two Brands.

[A]

No way.

[B]

If Rematch can get Puma like EA with skate can get some brands.

[C]

Yeah. It's an odd one because yeah, it gets a spitfire.

[A]

Some ET knees.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Some lovely industries, man.

[B]

Come on.

[C]

I mean it's a known franchise. It has a legacy.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

We're returning the skate. I don't know why we're choosing this route. Dump it and get everything.

[A]

Our skaters still wearing the skater shoes that were like a foot tall.

[C]

Platforms.

[A]

Like the ones that were just like.

[C]

Puffy as all those crazy Osiris shoes.

[A]

I mean just like the Edneys and all that stuff. Like I remember like I had friends wearing that were. That were really into. I was more into like the culture because I couldn't skate. I was too scared. I would hit my shin several times and give up. But the like the big tall shoes that were like taller than your ankle, they would go like past your ankle. They were just big puffy.

[D]

Oh big chunky ones.

[A]

Yeah. Because like when you're doing flips, it wouldn't hurt your foot or whatever.

[C]

Now see.

[A]

Yeah. Look at these big ass shoes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, those look like more like Jordans. Look for like the Etne Skating Shoes 2003 or something.

[C]

Season 3 and beyond you have player created parts, new game modes. Those need to be moved up right away. The new game modes, user parks, those got to be. That's top of the list priority.

[A]

Yes. Here they are.

[D]

Every skater chick had these, dude.

[A]

The pink etne's, the puffy ass shoes, dude, I love the Eddies are so cool as a brand. I mean I just love the logo and to Mike's point too.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Like the other one I have here for me is expanded multiplayer features which I know we already talked about. And they also have here on the. In their. I think season two where they say new co op game mode. I need that expeditiously.

[C]

Right. Right away.

[B]

I want more things, more ways to interact with the people that I'm playing with. Because right now it doesn't feel. Not that I get nothing out of partying with. With Mike and Barrett, but I feel like I get the bare minimum. Okay. What I get when we're doing an own.

[D]

The spot thing together, it should be a versus thing.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Whereas like at the end when we're doing a mission, quote unquote together, it's really just. We're all doing it separately, but the mission won't end until we all complete it. And then when at. At the end of the mission, it doesn't even show us each other's like, like replays. Best replay or you know each other's score.

[B]

Give me a recap of how Barrett or Mike did on the challenge. Give me something to make me feel like I'm actually playing with other people.

[C]

It's just odd. Blessing and skating.

[A]

Early access blessed Mike, which is one last sort of, you know, you both of y' all are walking together and you hear a little like, a little magical, like, sound, kind of sparkling kind of a lot of stuff. It's in a dumpster nearby, and you're like, what is it? And you open up the dumpster and you're like, what is this? And it's the magical game development wand that makes any magical game development wish come true. And you want to wave it and you're like, for Skate 2025, I want to wave this and make this expanded multiplayer feature. Aside from just give me more. What is like a specific thing you would want? Mike mentioned Prox chat. I think something like that could be cool and make the world feel a bit more alive, maybe more racist in some ways, but, you know, like what. What would you wave the wand right out and say, give this to me right now if I could have it in early access. Not even just a multiplayer feature. Just like, if I could have this right now. You mentioned more moves, Mike. Is that maybe one of the things I mean?

[C]

Yeah, of course I. I'd lean back to getting all the moves back that we had over the years. I would of course, want more game modes. I want to have this multiplayer experience where we can do own the spot. We can do death races. I think those are a must have private lobbies. Private swing. Okay, I'm gonna give you two. I like that. But I want to build off private lobbies. I can only squat up with four people. I should be able to own my world. I want to be able. Why are we still living in 2025 and I can't invite more than four people.

[B]

Right.

[C]

Let me own this open world. 40 people. I open up my lobby. If you're on my friends list, you got the code, you can join up. I want to have that right away. That's where we should be. On top of that, I would say user generated content.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Create a park. Should be ready to rock and roll. We're here. You've been play testing this for years. Let's get this going.

[A]

One skate battle royale would be awesome.

[B]

Well, actually, I was gonna jump off of that.

[A]

50 skaters in one area and like, the move pops up. You gotta do the movie. If you don't you're out.

[B]

I was gonna say this is. This is something that you can do in your season three or whatever. Like you're third part of your battle pass. I want Skate Battle Royale. But it's like fall guys. I want it to be obstacle based.

[C]

What's that crazy game show we always see on tv?

[B]

Barrett Wipeout.

[C]

No, no, the one.

[B]

The whole.

[C]

The one about skating. No, it's about skating because me and. Me and Cool Greg watch it all the time here at work. But they have the mega rail over the lake that you have to ride on. You got to skate up like the side of an angled wall. Yes. That's what it's called.

[A]

Thank you.

[C]

That should 100. I want. That would be fun. That's right. That'd be really generated content.

[B]

I like the frustrating thing about this game is that the mechanics are so good. You got the mechanics and there's. Sky's the limit. There's so much you can do with.

[A]

This that does seem really promising. Is that like. I think the biggest worry for most people was this game's gonna drop and just miss the core of it. And no matter what you put around the core, it doesn't matter if the core is not right. But it feels like they do have that. Now on the flip side of this, I go okay. But it's been in like previous testings for such a long time and this is not further along everywhere else.

[B]

Yeah, I.

[D]

It's a solid foundation that I think needs to pick up the pace in terms of everything else surrounding it because it feels so watered down corporate that it.

[B]

There.

[D]

There's a. Just a vibe shift that doesn't feel right. Even though the core gameplay is.

[C]

Is.

[D]

Is there?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It does not feel punk rock enough.

[B]

No, no.

[D]

I mean it doesn't feel anything. Like skate culture is an amalgamation of a bunch of different.

[A]

When I say funk rock, I don't mean like only the genre of music. I just mean like.

[C]

And that's the thing is like the.

[D]

Story of this game too is just like this skate company corporation bought a city to make it skate friendly. So it's literally just like utopia. Yeah, like a skate utopia. So it's like very not that whatsoever of feeling punk, feeling counterculture. It feels like we're corporation good and we're a part of the culture and it feels very off in that sense.

[A]

Like when SpaceX wanted to buy a town.

[B]

It'S when they put out the like Fever Street. But like late in the PS3 generation that was like when they're rebooting the street games, but they didn't feel street at all.

[A]

You didn't have the sauce.

[C]

You're not running from security guards in this game.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

You're not acting a fool.

[B]

You're not. You're not committed.

[C]

Fiasco Kick Push.

[A]

What?

[C]

But like, that's the biggest.

[B]

Tony hawk's Pro Skate 3 +4 just had that.

[C]

You know what I mean?

[B]

Like, they can't, they can't license every sport.

[C]

Game should have kick.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It's a rule.

[A]

I feel like it should. That should be right up next to the pepperoni diplomacy act. Yeah. If you're ordering pizza for your office, 60 has to be pepperoni. And if you're making a skating video game, Lupe Fiasco's cake Push has to be.

[B]

I think for me, the promise of this game came through when during the stream a couple hours in, I found a challenge that was like a pro, pro level challenge where they wanted me to jump off a building onto kind of like a half pipe situation that was like way, way further down. Like if I land, like there's no way I'm laying that normally. Right. It's way, way further down there. Landed this half pipe launch onto a bridge manual across the bridge, and then hop and land onto a mini pad that's like way further away. Right. Top level, top difficulty level challenge. And I tried it the first time. I was like, damn, that's hard. I tried it 30 more times.

[A]

I did see this being attempted a lot on the TV yesterday.

[B]

I was on this for probably like 20 minutes straight being like, yo, I'm. I'm gonna figure this out. And I was on here for so long that Barrett found it and started doing himself too. And when I tell you I was so locked the in, like the more you watch this footage, the more you're just gonna see me fail and faceplate over and over.

[A]

I like this landing mechanic. Like the landing kind of cave where you, where you're the target zones you don't really need. Was that in the OG Skate at all?

[C]

No, not like this.

[B]

Not the target.

[C]

You didn't have this. You didn't have this much freedom and control when you were free falling in hall of me. You could move like this. But this definitely adds an extra level of control here.

[B]

Yes. And like it's beautiful because you're going from the hall of me, like, let me dive sky skydive and aim my landing to let me press L2 and R2 and like the triangle button to cannonball position myself while I'M grabbing my board and then let me try aim it upwards so I can mint. There's so much stuff happening here at the same time and it's a beautiful display of what skate does gameplay wise at its best. I just need everything around this to step the fuck up because this is like, for me, this is what it's about. And this is like the one challenge where I'm like, man, you guys nailed this. I need more shit to like bring this to where it needs to be. That way we can have stuff like this shine through.

[A]

Speaking of hollow meat, we have a super chat From Con Man 1192 says they better add hall of Meat. Missed opportunity with the new free fall controls. If they don't. What can you explain? Give me a quick rundown. What is hall of Meat?

[C]

All of meat is this. But you would score more points the more disastrous your landing would be.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

So you would like break bones and like all of this stuff. So you get higher points, a high.

[C]

Object crash as hard as you could to get the most points with the just gnarliest of crashes. And you'd add style in there by back flipping, grabbing your leg and doing a cool corkscrew. But yeah, they don't have that. You would think that's going to be high on the list because at its core they have a really good, you know, off the board feel.

[A]

Yeah. The last two super chats, or the last three rather, are kind of all saying the same thing. We have Dominique Odom and we have Oliver Steele with multiple super chats. Thank you, Dominique for your $2. Thank you, Oliver Steele for your $7. And the whole thought here is, bring back coach Frank. Oliver still said, I can't stand V. Is it just me? The constant corny humor is exhausting. And then Dominique said Tim Robinson as this game's coach Frank to replace V.

[C]

These guys said it best. You brought, you should have brought him in to be Coach Frank. He's the fun, he's the shitty writing. And then have the skaters just be themselves. Yeah, right. And then we would have had an instant win of like, hey, this zone leader is by this skater. Sure, the VO sounds bad, but they're, they're true to life stuff. And then Tim Robinson can have all the dumb lines that you would want there. Okay, Skate goes up really quick for a perfect one. And like, you guys know it. Skate is the perfect one more try. Video game it is. Skate is a top five. One more try. Video games, we all have those in our minds.

[B]

I love games.

[C]

That one more I. One more.

[B]

What are the top four? Neon white. Neon white's on the list.

[C]

Neon white. Oh, Boss fighting in Elden Rings.

[B]

Trials. Like Trials Fusion. Oh, Trials. Trials. Fusion is a top five skate.

[D]

Super Meat Boy.

[B]

Super Meat Boy. That might be the top five because.

[C]

The instant reset yourself and putting down a marker anywhere, it's just so perfect for the one more try.

[B]

Celeste in that list too?

[A]

Oh yeah, definitely.

[C]

Celeste, give us your top 10. One more try. Video games. Let me know.

[B]

Yeah, please Chat.

[A]

Put him in the car.

[B]

I think we got. I think we got a good list already.

[A]

Yeah, man, you really. I saw a recipe Jason Lee and I thought he actually died. You all me up with that? Whoever put that in.

[B]

I was wondering why you're on Wikipedia.

[A]

Scared the hell out of me. He played coach Frank because I didn't realize he was Coach Frank. Yeah.

[B]

Katana zero.

[C]

Make a shit list.

[B]

Boomerang X. Oh, Boomerang.

[A]

Ghost Runner.

[C]

Oh, one more time.

[B]

The Astrobot. Like Speedrun levels for sure.

[C]

I'll be better. I can't wait to go play more. At its core it is great around it. It's still. It's just early access and that sucks.

[A]

There's a lot of that. I mean I will say though, just based on everything that's been said, I am coming away from this as a listener, just way more positive. As you know, as I was going into it thinking that there's a good chance that this is a. A a trash fire with how long it's been gestating and why is it taking so long. But it seems like the core mechanics feel great. It feels good to play now you're in early access for a reason. Let's keep on building this out. We already saw. Got a glimpse of the road map and all that. Seems very, very promising. Shout out.

[B]

Track Mania. Trackmania is definitely.

[C]

Someone said Cuphead. Yeah, Cuphead for sure.

[B]

Yeah, I can see that.

[A]

If you are digging skate, let us know in the comments down below. What do you want them to work on? Maybe the devs are looking in the comments and going wow, that's a really good idea right there. Maybe they should put Andy and Barrett in the game to voice act. Do you want me to be Clive? I can be Clay Rosefield. I need you to do a kick flip here.

[D]

Andy tell me to get a kick flip for sick footy. But in that voice can you.

[A]

Can you do a kick flip for some sick footy for my brother. For my brother Joshua.

[D]

Put that on the real.

[A]

Love you all. Appreciate you all watching. Blessings Mike, thank you for your input. Barrett, thanks for writing the show. And all of y', all, thank you for watching. Take care of yourself, take care of each other, and we'll see you tomorrow for more podcast and fun. But after this, if you're on Twitch, stay right here because Mike is going to be showing you the top 10 spots to skate in Skate Early Access. Bye, everybody.