Shaun White Skateboarding Review for PS3

Short version: Shaun White Skateboarding came out late in 2010 for PS3 and Xbox 360, and I played the PS3 version. You skate through a gray city run by The Ministry, bringing color back with Flow, shaping rails and bending the ground as you go. The load times are long and it’s easy to get lost, but it’s surprisingly good, and it was a good buy for the 4 bucks I paid.

After Skate 3 came out, there was a hole in the video game skateboarding world that has yet to be filled. Luckily, Shaun White came in to save the day late in 2010 with Shaun White Skateboarding for the PS3 and Xbox 360. And it’s actually surprisingly good. Let’s take a look at it.

The story: a gray city and The Ministry

Shaun White does something interesting for a skateboarding game: it actually has a legitimate story. Sure, the Underground games and the Skate series had stories that revolved around skateboarding, but this is a bit different. This is an epic, save-the-world type of story.

You see, the city is controlled by The Ministry, an evil government bent on controlling everyone and conforming them into ideal, gray workers.

And I mean gray literally. Using their evil de-influencer technology, they have changed the world to gray. Why? Because colors cause feelings, and feelings are bad for you. The Ministry has captured Shaun White because he’s a member of the Rising, a group of skateboarders trying to save the world. You are called to rescue him, and that’s the main goal of the game.

The only way to help people break free is to expose them to creative thought… through skateboarding. Visually, this looks great. When you land a trick, a wave of color explodes out from you, changing the environment. Color and graffiti appear on walls, benches transform and become skateable, quarter pipes grow out of walls and the pavement warps to create ramps. This is incredibly addictive. Every time I got to a new area, I just wanted to brighten it all up and mark my territory. It feels good to stand back and see how beautiful the area gets when you’re done influencing it with your flow.

And nothing says freedom for people like Stride Gum. Get used to seeing that everywhere. There are also some other real brands here, like Wendy’s. I feel like there’s some weird Cold War capitalism propaganda going on. Express your individuality through your favorite corporate brands! Freedom!

Controls and vert skating

Shaun White balances out gameplay and realism better than any other skate game. It tries to be as realistic as possible, but it never forgets that it’s a video game.

For example, let’s look at the controls. The flip controls are a hybrid of Skate and Tony Hawk. You use the analog stick, and push it in a direction to do a trick. There are no flick and spin motions, but it’s still analog, so you do tricks higher or lower based on how hard you do the motion.

Grabs are done by moving the right stick in a direction while in the air. But that’s the only regular thing about the vert controls.

Because Shaun White is a vert skater, the developers put a ton of effort into making the vert stuff feel right, even though it’s a small part of the game.

When you do a flip trick on vert, you automatically do the vert version of it, so you’ll do a kickflip indy instead of just a kickflip, or a hardflip cannonball, or any number of vert combos. There are also other kinds of air tricks, like flips, McTwists, frontside 540s, stuff like that. To do them, you hold R2 and hit a direction. Ollieing is optional and doesn’t actually help you gain airtime. To skate vert and gain flow normally, you just pump, then do a grab once you clear the coping. I can’t think of a game that has a more realistic feel to the vert skating. And you actually have to learn new tricks by buying them with XP at the skate shop. That makes sense in the story, because you’re being trained to get good enough to rescue Shaun.

Magic powers

But to balance out that realism, you basically have magic powers. You can control rails, move the ground, create streets and even generate a rail out of thin air to save yourself when you’re falling. And this solves some problems in the game. How else would you be able to wallride billboards and get around easily? It also adds some problem solving to the gameplay, and really mixes things up.

Load times and getting lost

So far, this game is sounding great! But it does have a few issues. First is the endless load times. The game is NOT open world, and it requires installation. And yet, it’s still got very long load times. Even when jumping back to a reset point! In Skate, you can jump back to a reset point instantly if you’re close. If you’re farther away, it will cover the load time with a little static. And only if you’ve gotten really far away will it load. But in Shaun White, it’s a full loading screen even if you just want to go 10 feet. Because of this, I almost never used it.

Another issue is how easy it is to get lost. The city is divided up into sections, and sometimes you have to travel between these sections, either by monorail (which isn’t always available), or by just going down the correct alley. At one point, I got lost for almost an hour. I needed to travel to the right on the main map, and I tried every alley over and over, until I finally realized that I had to go south in order to move east on the main map. What? I was so frustrated. It’s not labeled in any way, and unless you just happen to remember where to go, you’re in for an annoying time, especially when you consider the load times. A few times, I had to find the alley to travel, wait for it to load, then find the monorail, then wait for that to load, just because I couldn’t go directly where I needed to go. A map with quick travel would have solved that problem easily.

Flow

So what exactly do you do in this game? To answer that, I’ll need to explain the concept of Flow. Put simply, Flow is your Tony Hawk style special meter. The more tricks you land and the more points you rack up, the higher your Flow meter will get. There are 3 levels of Flow, and the higher you get, the more things you can influence. Some people and major landmarks will require more Flow.

So as you go through the story, you’ll basically just be unlocking and fixing things with Flow. Bring back the skate parks, take down the billboards, put up ads for the skate shop and other things like that. Later in the game, you have to break into The Ministry by breaking their machinery and sneaking into their buildings. How do you do that? Any guesses? That’s right, Flow!

You spend so much time just building up points, and it really gets repetitive. The story isn’t all that exciting, so I tend to skip most of the cutscenes. That means that I would go from a spot where I needed to gain Flow, then instantly be in another area where I need to gain Flow.

Hacking, de-influencers and chase scenes

That said, the game does its best to mix things up, and it’s usually successful. For example, sometimes you have to hack computers to hook up electricity and open doors and things like that. You take control of a ball and roll around on an obstacle course made up of ribbon cables and circuit boards. They start really easy, but eventually get really hard by the end of the game.

Also, there are times you have to take down Ministry technology, either by smashing de-influencers, taking down zeppelins or influencing pylons so you can destroy them. These things are pretty cool, but they bring them back way too often.

Another cool thing, though, is the chase scenes. There are a couple of times in the game when you’re being chased, like by a helicopter, and you have to avoid getting shot and make an escape. It’s a lot of fun, and they’re full of cool visual moments.

Breaking Shaun out (spoilers)

After following the story for a while, it’s time to break Shaun out. You have to infiltrate The Ministry and use all of your powers to get his cell unlocked. This part is a lot of fun and the difficulty is just right. When you get him out, you do one last thing, and then you finally control Shaun for the final part of the game. Spoilers ahead! The story isn’t much, but if you want to play it fresh, skip ahead to the next section.

Alright, are you ready?

As Shaun, you have to… gain the highest level of Flow and do the normal stuff you’ve been doing this whole time. Then Shaun saves the day!

You know, I thought the way it ends is a little weird. You play as yourself through the whole game and do all the work, but it still ends up being Shaun that gets all the glory in the end for doing almost nothing. I guess it would be weird if you “needed” to break him out and then he didn’t do anything, but I still thought it was strange. But I guess his name is on the case, so I shouldn’t be too surprised.

After that, you find out the leader of the Rising is also evil!

“There is now a power vacuum that will allow me to move in and take complete control. You’re all a bunch of wankers! All hail Jonah, the new complete ruler! Ah, I’m just messing with you. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Post-game and the 3D mode

There is some post-game stuff you can still do, like trying to grind off all the skate stoppers and doing little challenges and stuff, but the one thing I really wanted to try is the 3D mode. I don’t have a 3D TV, but what I do have is the old school red-cyan 3D glasses, which the game supports. I had to change the settings for my particular screen size.

It actually works remarkably well. Of course, the glasses make the color wash out, and I wouldn’t want to wear them the whole time, but I’m surprised how good it looks. Trying to line up the shape rails is a lot easier, and seeing the balance meters floating next to you is really cool. Skating vert feels a lot different because you can really feel how high you are. If you have the option to play the game like this, I would strongly consider it. It seems like the frame rate drops a little bit every now and then, but it’s really not that noticeable.

Is it worth playing today?

Shaun White Skateboarding is a surprisingly decent game. It has a few annoying issues, but just like Grind Session, I think they all would have been ironed out if a sequel ever came out. The game really tried hard to differentiate itself from the other skateboarding games out there, and it succeeded. What other game lets you affect the environment and shape rails while you’re skating? What other game has an epic, large scale story? You’ve got to give it credit. And considering that I got the special Target edition for only 4 bucks, it’s a good buy.

There’s also a Wii version, which I can only assume is terrible.