While Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater had a ton of reasons for it becoming so incredibly popular on the PlayStation, if there was one area that could be pinpointed down it would have to be the ease of being able to play the game. Almost anyone can jump into the game and start pulling off a bunch of moves with no problem. Street Sk8er follows the same formula, and within minutes of popping the game CD in I was able to string together multiple maneuvers and grind off all the straight edges in sight. And as I continued to play the game I was able to improve my abilities and earn higher scores so that I could unlock more in the game. It was this ease that kept the frustration level to a minimum, and was a key factor in keeping me playing.

Unlike the somewhat more complicated control scheme of Thrasher: Skate or Destroy, Street Sk8er to simply has you holding down one of the action buttons (like circle, triangle, x) and then pressing down on a direction. The different combinations of directions and buttons will result in one of the many, many moves available in Street Sk8er 2’s repertoire. Throwing out one of them will garner some points, but the real deal behind the game is learning the correct way to string them together to produce the highest score producing combinations. Some of the best ways to pick up some easy 2000 to 3000 point totals was holding down the R1 or L1 buttons (these allow you to rotate in either direction) and then adding another trick or two to that. As I became more engrossed into the game I began doing better and better, and the more fun I was having. It is not quite as fantastic as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, but I’ll be damned to say that Street Sk8er 2 isn’t still extremely fun.

Street Sk8er 2 is decent, graphically. The engine powering the game is a bit substandard, as the frame rate will flip out all the time and never seems to stay constant. At times it will be running insanely fast and very smooth (this happens during the time that perhaps only the sky background and distant objects are on screen; usually during a high jump) and then it will quickly become too slow and sluggish. It does not make sense at certain times, though; in an area where there is little action occurring the engine will begin hitting the low mark. If you attempt to enter into the multiplayer modes where the split-screen comes in, prepare for the slow frame rates all the time. Since there are two skaters on-screen at the same time, the engine is almost never able to stay completely stable, and while it never hinders gameplay to any extent, it is very noticeable and somewhat annoying.

Moving past the frame rate, Street Sk8er 2 has some decently modeled characters, though they do not feature all that much detail. The environments themselves are nice looking and are completely varied from each other, though it would have been nice to see some other events taking place while you skate, instead of the occasional car far off in the distance or pigeon on the ground. Unfortunately, though, that would probably kill the frame rate even worse than the already relatively poor state it is in.

The central mode of this skateboarding title is its competition mode, where you do not face off against other skateboarders, but rather against the clock. You’re given a track and must earn a certain number of points from tricks and pass the finish line before time is up. At times I thought this was an enjoyable task, while more than a couple of times I wanted to take the CD and crack it in half. Mostly, however, it forced me to learn the controls to the utmost and figure out the best combinations of tricks to use at a given time. In the case that I was having some trouble completing a certain stage with the number of required points (and believe me, there were times like that), there are certain “crystals” located secretly on the track that will immediately grant a certain numbers of points. Reds are worth 2,000, blues are worth 4,000 and greens are worth 9,999. These can easily aid in completing a specific track, though most of the time they are not so easy to obtain and consist of taking the risk of falling into an area that might result in losing massive amounts of time or points.

After the unique two-player modes that were found in Thrasher: Skate or Destroy and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, I was hoping that Street Sk8er 2 would also have some interesting segments, but alas, my expectations were thrown down. There’s the normal one on one competition where you are able to take on another human player to see who is able to earn the most amount of points in a certain amount of time. Then there is a pool duel, where two people compete to pick up five boxes first. Unfortunately, that’s all there is to it. No interesting see-who-can-hurt-themselves-the-most or anything like that, just the plain old expected and a little extra.

Ahead of the curve on all the other skateboarding titles, Street Sk8er 2 allows players to create their own skate park, and this is probably the game’s main draw away from the other titles. It is expected that it’s impossible to recreate the extensive outside environments that are featured in the game’s main tracks, but for what there is, it is very cool. Most of the game’s trick sections can be laid down in the boxed in skate park, and they can be rotated to fit the design of your choice. At times it can feel a bit limited, but since this is the first time that a feature like this has been included in a game of this type it can be expected that the features a bit on the dry side. Future generations of skateboarding titles (and perhaps in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2’s mode) should be much more advanced, and allow for deeper customization. I did enjoy the fact that it allowed you to load up the level and skate around in it with a friend or by yourself before actual saving it to the memory card so that changes and edits could be made.

Electronic Arts and Microcabin have improved on the original Street Sk8er quite well, but it still is not enough to edge out the already released competing titles. A whole new war of skateboarding titles is about to begin, and it’s going to take quite a bit to knock down the current champion. We can’t wait to see what the designers have in store for the third title in the Street Sk8er series, which we expect to find on the PlayStation 2.