LTTP: Skate (Videogame) and maybe a little Trainspotting (Book)

There are some innovations in video gaming that make you wonder how we got along before them. Often, these innovations are closely tied to a certain game as well.  Duel stick controls were introduced by Halo. Resident Evil 4 perfected the over-the-shoulder 3rd person shooter. Innovations that you can remember feeling so right, even though you've never seen them before.
The original Skate released by EA in 2007 is one of these games. In Skate, instead of pushing a button or buttons to perform a trick, the game has you flicking, holding and twisting the right control stick in specific ways to even perform a simple kick-flip. This may not seem amazing but you have to remember that in 2007 the popular Tony Hawk series of skating videogames had been annually released since 1999. Basically owning a monopoly on the market and by 2005 the quality of the games began to fade immensely. EA saw the perfect opportunity to get into the fray and pick up the fans tired of the Tony Hawk formula. To do that they had to set themselves apart from the button mashing repetitiveness of the Hawk games and innovate. They did just that.
See, in the the Hawk games, your character had a certain set of tricks. You would only be able to perform harder tricks by 'unlocking' them by completing challenges that you may or may not want to do. What I find so amazing about the Skate series is that all of the tricks in the game are available to you the moment you start. The challenge comes from learning and mastering the complicated control scheme.
I know this is going to sound corny but, when I first played Skate I felt like the experience was analogous to learning how to actually skateboard. I was learning a new set of movements and I got better at performing the simple moves. Then at some point you stop thinking about what to do with your hands to perform a trick and you just do them.
I liken it to reading Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. Written in Scottish dialect, Trainspotting, is hard to read at first. Then, almost without warning, the dialect clicks in your brain and then you cannot imagine the book being written any other way. The book takes all the rules you learned from years of reading English as it was meant to be read and throws them out the window. Now, not only have you tricked your brain into thinking/reading in a Scottish accent, it gives you a deeper connection with the fiction. Skate does the same thing. After learning for the better part of a decade from Hawk how to play skateboarding games, Skate comes along and teaches your brain to think on a whole other physical level.
I recommend both Skate and Trainspotting to anyone.
Also, Skate may have the best bail physics ever.



Literally days of my life gone to replaying spectacular bails.