skate 4 review

made on october 11, 2025

 

i loved skate 3. it was one of my favorite games of all time. i spent more time dicking around in skate 3 than probably seeing my own family members from the time i was like 7 to 15. everything about it made it the perfect skateboarding game. the look and feel, the missions, the characters, the free play, the multiplayer, the $50 dlc that was overpriced to death, the soundtrack, the customization, the film-making features, the level maker. even the glitches that broke the game more than being martyred by jews made it more spectacular unintentionally.

 

i spent countless nights playing this fucking game, and i would never take all that time back, no matter how much it would save my life. so when i heard that skate 4 (aka skate., but that's what they called the first game in 2007 so im just gonna call this release skate 4) was released, i was hooked. i wanted to play the early access way earlier than anticipated, but never got the chance. and then it released to the public. considering my only game consoles left include a gamecube, wii, ps2, a game boy advance, and dsi, i decided to play it on my computer. what's the worst that could happen?

 

starting off, skate 4 is priced at $free.99. shit is more cheaper than kanye's workout tape. this price tag, however, comes with a price of its own as you will find out later.

 

before playing, i had to download this game, because they don't make physical copies of games like they used to (especially considering two things: i acquired this off steam, and motherfuckers don't be making physical pc games anymore which is bullshit). every single triple a title nowadays is around 50-100 gb in storage space, which is too much for anyone to be downloading for one game at that (i'm looking at you gta v). surprisingly, skate 4 was only... 8 gb??? how the hell? i'll explain shortly.

 

when you boot up the game, you'll need a controller. i, of course, knew this beforehand, because it's a skate game and it's having an official pc release, and it would be silly for you to spaz out with the mouse in order to do tricks.

 

something i didn't know, however, was that you also need an ea account to play skate 4. fuck. i hate having to make an account just to play a game that i purchased with a steam account. what's the point? they connected the ea account to my steam to begin with, so why not just use the steam account?? it's just more bullshit stacked on top of one another that stops you from getting into the action. skate 3 never had this as far as i could remember (of course, i could be blinded by nostalgia here). but, as it turns out, it will only get worse from here, as i might've mentioned.

 

skate 4 asks if you've played skate 3 before. no shit. of course i have, so i clicked yes. i even chose the classic skate 3 control scheme. i'd assume the game would launch me in without a lot of tutorials, since if i've played a game in a series before, and the new installment asks me about it, i wouldn't need 2 hours worth of beginner's tutorials. i was fucking wrong. again.

 

instead of coach frank, our lord and savior portrayed by jason lee, we have some ai bitch nobody cares about spewing shit about how to do an ollie. it's like you're a ww2 veteran being retaught a war you damn well experienced by chatgpt. it's that bad. again, my nostalgia may be turning me into ray charles, but in skate 3, i'm pretty sure a good portion of this shit was optional, and you could either do the missions whenever you feel like, or dick around in free play mode without anyone screaming about it.

 

also, the character customization is very lacking. i know this game is in early access even after 5 years of development, but these hair styles and clothes aren't good at all. luckily, i was at the very least able to go bald like i am in real life, but i sadly couldn't choose any plain shirts or pants, which sounds like a weird complaint, but you're only given a choice of 5 pairs of shirts and pants to choose from that lack in style.

 

if that wasn't enough to gouge your eyes out with a rusty spoon on a tuesday night, the game is online only (for now at least, i remember hearing they'll add an 'offline only' mode, but it should've had one to begin with). fuck off. genuinely. that's the worst shit i've ever heard. imagine your internet goes out and you wanna play a skate game but you don't have a stable wifi connection. it would be better to pirate skate 3 for your pc. not only that, but i've been disconnected multiple times in the middle of gameplay, and it gets frustrating awfully quick.

 

the soundtrack isn't good. it just isn't. okay, maybe that's a bit of a lie, but it doesn't feel memorable at all in comparison to skate 3's soundtrack. there's only a few artists on here i recognize or love to death: MF DOOM, earth wind and fire, joey valence and brae, and labi siffre. it would be better if there was an option to add your own songs and metadata into the game's files like in gta games, but that's not even an option.

 

remember how i mentioned that skate 4 is only 8 gb, and how the game is online only? yup. it's a cloud game. that was easy to figure out, wasn't it?

 

anddddd, the game's ui is just fortnite coded. fuck me. i have a distaste for games like this, and seeing a game i was actually hyped for end up like this leaves a sour taste in my mouth. i know this is a nitpicky thing to complain about, but it doesn't feel right.

 

ea said there wouldn't be any loot boxes in skate 4... but they do have battle passes. and microtransactions. i don't feel like i need to explain this one.

 

the physics are fun for a while, but again, after everything else that was thrown at me, it's just hard to try and have a good time with the game.

 

i uninstalled skate 4 after almost 4 hours of "gameplay". i had more fun in the game trying to kill myself. all of the things i loved about skate 3 were taken hostage by bill cosby and raped to death.

 

1.75/10

 

i might keep playing this game with some of my friends to torture myself more, and because i haven't completed it, so my review is partially just first impressions compared to diving deeper and deeper (and also because i realize that voting with my wallet is useless when others that aren't like you will consume regardless of quality).

 

at the same time, i'll probably just try to emulate skate 3 on my pc. if i can manage to do the second one correctly, i'll let you fuckers know, and we'll all have a ball together.

 

kthxbai. >w<