Skate City Switch NSP + Update Free Download Romslab

Skate City Switch Free Download If there’s one game genre I’ll always give a try, it’s skating games. From Tony Hawk to Skate, to OlliOlli, skating games just have the perfect combination of chill vibes, satisfying mechanics, and a satisfying level of replayability. To its credit, Skate City has all of those elements, but they all feel far too simplistic and paired back. It can be simplistic fun, and a good way to kill time, but it mostly feels like filler and gets old fast. ROMSLAB.COM  Best Switch Games

Skate City Switch NSP + Update Free Download Romslab

At its core, Skate City is very similar to other side-scrolling skating games like OlliOlli. You control your skater by holding down a button to move forward, and then performing tricks with the left and right sticks depending on which direction you flick the sticks in, much like Skate. You can also use the right bumpers to perform manuals and balance yourself when grinding, but that’s really the basics of it. From there it really becomes about learning variations of tricks and being able to score as many points as possible.

Gamelay Skate City Nintendo Switch

Gameplay is built to be simplistic, and to that end it works. It’s easy to jump in, and it can be fun to pop into a few challenges and then hop out again. The tricks are all pretty easy to learn, with enough room for skill growth to feel like progression is being made. This simplicity is both the game’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness. As much fun as it is to jump in for half an hour at a time, you eventually run out of reasons to do so unless you’re just looking to improve your scores. Even then, the game’s mechanics are so basic that it doesn’t feel satisfying in the same way that other skating games do. Super Mario Maker 2 Switch

Skate City Switch NSP + Update Free Download Romslab

Skate City is at its best when you’re going through its challenges. There are 21 challenges in each of the three maps, and they slowly get harder as you advance through. There’s a fair amount of variety too, with some challenges having you avoid the police, whilst others have you performing specific tricks within circles. Some of the challenges can be pretty hard, but they also make the game feel like it has a purpose, and I feel like it makes the most out of the mechanics. Wolfenstein II The New Colossus Switch

Creative Stuff

It’s all pretty intuitive stuff and, once you’ve got the hang of a few moves and a feeling for how tricks flow into one another, it feels pretty great to put together little runs through Los Angeles, Oslo and Barcelona, pulling off combos, nailing jumps, grinding rails and discovering new ways in which to bend the simple environments to your will — and the environments here, from a gameplay and stylistic point of view, really are rather simple; spartan, even. With muted colours, very little in the way of detail and a breezy, minimalist soundtrack that matches the look and feel of what’s happening on-screen, Skate City rolls with an aesthetic that gives the whole thing an appropriately chilled skater vibe.

Skate City Switch NSP + Update Free Download Romslab

Having said that, there is a nice flow to how these locations progress the game’s difficulty, with Los Angeles introducing you to the basics, giving you a tour through the various types of challenge on offer, before Oslo and Barcelona slowly begin to crank up the heat with a little more complexity introduced to the feats you’re expected to nail. Types of challenges on offer range from the usual (pulling off of a range of specified tricks and besting of set scores) to more unique stuff (like running away from the local cops, racing against a CPU challenger and even putting your skills to the test by avoiding pedestrians by hopping onto grindable rails and walls in order to get out of the way before you send yourself and any hapless bystanders sprawling across the asphalt). FIFA 19 Switch NSP

Kick, Push, Chill…

Skate City is an odd game. Skateboarding and tranquillity are not synonymous words, generally. Considering that skateboarding is classed as an “extreme sport”, it’s always a surprise when something chill and more realistic comes along. In fact, when any sport that’s had some kind of X-Games affiliation tries to deviate, it’s met with either surprise or skepticism.

We have had some grounded sidewalk surfing games. EA’s Skate series lets you cruise about and pull off impressive, “normal” trick sequences. Maybe not so much in later entries, but the first one definitely. Then more recent efforts like Session and Skater XL have also tried to create the same magic, to some degree. But what about the 2D world?

Skate City Switch NSP + Update Free Download Romslab

Well, there hasn’t been many. Oh sure, there’s been 2D skateboarding games, no doubts there. Just nothing that encourages you to take a calmer approach with some lo-fi beats accompanying it. So when a game subverts that approach and doesn’t have you flipping over helicopters or have washed out Jackass stars attached to it, it’s a welcome change. DOOM Eternal Switch 

Now, after an eighteen month exclusivity deal with Apple is finally up, Skate City is making its way to a bigger audience. It’s an arcade game, but not as you’d expect it. Grab your board and we’ll carve a line through this review to find out why.

Add-ons (DLC): Skate City Switch NSP + Update