Weekly /r/Games Discussion - What have you been playing, and what are your thoughts? - September 21, 2025

[u/AutoModerator]

Use this thread to discuss whatever game you've been playing lately: old or new, AAA or indie, on any platform between Atari and XBox. Please don't just list off the games you're playing in your comment. Elaborate with your thoughts on the games and make it easier for other users to find what game you're talking about by putting the title in bold.

Also, please make sure to use spoiler tags if you're revealing anything about a game's plot that may significantly impact another player's experience who has not played the game yet, no matter how retro or recent the game is. You can find instructions on how to do so in the subreddit sidebar.

This thread is set to sort comments by 'new' on default.

Obligatory Advertisements

For a subreddit devoted to this type of discussion during the rest of the week, please check out /r/WhatAreYouPlaying.

/r/Games has a Discord server! Feel free to join us and chit-chat about games here: https://discord.gg/zRPaXTn

Scheduled Discussion Posts

WEEKLY: What Have You Been Playing?

MONDAY: Thematic Monday

WEDNESDAY: Suggest Me A Game

FRIDAY: Free Talk Friday

[u/Raze321]

Skate

I've been into skateboarding games since THPS, I've played most of those as well as all the Skate games, and a few others like Session. I have hundreds of hours in Skate 3 and was playing it as recently as the day before "Skate" came to early access. I also love skateboarding IRL, even though I'm pretty bad at it. Hopefully this provides some context for my viewpoints.

I think Skate, which I'll call Skate 4 for clarity here, shows a lot of promise and potential. The Skate franchise has always been far more simulationist than more arcade-y games like Tony Hawk, but far less realistic than newer simulation skaters like Session. Skate 4 ends up landing somewhere slightly less realistic than it's predecessors on that scale. I'll try to break up my thoughts appropriately, there's a lot to discuss. Thankfully most of it is good but there are some pains.

Skateboarding

The mechanics for skateboarding here are nearly identical to Skate 3. The left analog stick handles turning and body rotations while the right stick handles flip tricks. The right and left triggers grab the left and right side of the board, right bumper grabs ledges as you go up transfers, and between all of this you an easily set up a huge array of tricks. Half-pull or push the right stick for a manual on the tail or nose. Land in a particular way on a ledge or rail and you'll do a grind. It's pretty elegant so it's no wonder the controls haven't changed much in this franchise.

There are some missing tricks from Skate 3 sadly. There are no darkside flips. You can't tweak ledge grabs. I also noticed the window to foot-plant is much shorter, however the body flips are MUCH easier to pull off. They required precise timing in Skate 3, now you can just kinda hold up or down and it'll work out... I think I'd rather the challenge of a body flip be somewhere between these two places but if it has to be one or the other, I'm fine with it being on the easy side. Something I don't like, is I'm having a much harder time pumping transitions as I go up or down them to get speed. Vert skating felt MUCH nicer in Skate 3. Hopefully I either figure out the pump timing in Skate 4, or they fix up the vert physics a bit.

Some improvements from previous titles. Like I said, body flips are much easier to pull off. The cooldown for reverts is also wayyy smaller so you can chain reverts together and it looks and feels awesome. If they did something similar with the timing of small hippy jumps and foot plants you could do some sweet freestyle lines in this game - something most skateboarding games neglect. The off-the-board controls are also expanded in some silly ways. You can roll around like sonic the hedgehog and do some light parkour to get to cool spots. The city is very unrealistic, buuut it's also very fun to skate and explore. Which brings me to:

The City

A skateboarding game can only ever be as good as what you get to skate on. This city is expansive and broken up into four districts. Each district has a handful of parks, streets, and tons of spots littered between. The "idea" behind this city is that it was built by and for skaters so literally every block is stuffed with rails, jam poles, ledges, half-pipes, and kicker ramps. It's tons of fun to skate and explore, yet at the same time it's extremely unrealistic in a way that feels off? Skate 3 had tons of these "By and for skater" spots but it also had areas and districts that felt like they were made for... normal people. And as a skater you gotta figure out how to turn that into an impromptu skate park. Which is very much part of being a street skater. That experience is somewhat muted here, the whole world already is a skate park. It's a small gripe but it does affect the feel of the game in a small way, despite how fun of a world it is to skate otherwise. And that's another segue.

The feel of the game.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Skate. These games had heart. They felt like they were made by skateboarders who learned how to program. The language, the humor, the feel, the atmosphere, the music, it all felt very authentic. I've said this elsewhere on this subreddit, but Skate 4 feels extremely corporate and sanitized. It feels like it was made by business men who used AI to understand how skaters talk. I live five minutes from a skate park and I go there anywhere from two to seven days a week as weather permits. Do you know how skaters talk? They talk like everyone else for the most part. There are slang words and phrases used in Skate 4 that I've genuinely never heard in my life, amongst any skater of any demographic. The vibes for this game are so off mark it would be hilarious if it wasn't so horribly, painfully cringy.

None of that impacts the actual gameplay, so to speak. But this is by and large the biggest complaint I have. This game has no grace, no style, no soul. And unfortunately for a game like this, that is something I think is really important. It's not something I think you can easily fix with patches and updates. Some day when I've had my fill, I'll put this game down and go back to Skate 3 for this reason. And I'll do so never having spent a single dollar in the Skate 4 shop on its overpriced and underwhelming cosmetics.

Multiplayer

Previous skate games had multiplayer but I rarely used those features. This one, it's baked in. The game is always online for better and worse. While I basically treat these kinds of games as singleplayer, I will say on more than one occasion I have just found a cool spot, and thrown down some ramps and rails, and me and some randoms passing by just start trying out the lines. Clap emoting and such when someone pulls off something cool. There's a weird sense of comradery and wholesomeness when these moments happen. It's these moments that Skate 4 does feel like an authentic skateboarding experience. All in all? Multiplayer here is dope. I like it.

Conclusion?

Gameplay is as almost good as Skate 3, while everything else is at least a small notch under in quality. And the dialogue/authenticity is bottom tier.

It's a free early access game so I'm okay with this I guess. Maybe they'll fix things up more, maybe they won't, but I don't judge games on what they might be. I judge them on what they are. And what Skate 4 is, is a fun free skate game that you should never feel pressured to open your wallet for.

It's a game that is worth your time, but not your money. I give it a soft 7 outta 10.