EA’s long-awaited reboot of its Skate franchise by the developers at Full Circle finally kicked off to the public yesterday, September 16. The fourth installment in the Skate franchise—aptly named Skate.—released into a free-to-play early access state for PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Xbox One and Series S|X gamers. With it being five years now since the game’s announcement back in 2020, there’s hardly any doubt that fans are eager to get a taste of what Full Circle has been cooking all this time.
Although Skate. is still in early access, cruising around the vast city of San Van while reacclimating yourself with the Flick-it tricks system feels identical to its massively famous predecessor, Skate 3. What is so incredible about this fact is that it is despite the game’s engine change to the Frostbite engine, meaning that the developers at Full Circle had to rebuild the revolutionary tricking system from the ground up. This is likely a leading factor in why it has taken Full Circle five years to finally release an early access build of their game.
The last game released in EA’s Skate franchise of games was Skate 3, which was released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Microsoft brought a large number of games from its Xbox 360 catalogue, including all three previous Skate games, into the modern era with ports to newer hardware. Skate fans on PlayStation, however, haven’t been so lucky, as they haven’t been able to play any of the Skate games without a PlayStation 3 since 2010. With that being said, Skate. being released on the PlayStation 4 and 5 simultaneously as of yesterday’s release makes it so that now no generation of PlayStation since the PS3 has gone without a Skate game.
The amount of possibilities this new entry in the Skate franchise brings to the table is nearly endless, thanks to the revamped tricking system, as nearly all of the features present in the original Skate games are here, plus all-new ways to trick, and even more on the way. With brand new parkour tricks like vaulting, spin jumps, dives and slides, grounded tuck and roll maneuvers, and all of the mid-air hall-of-meat tricks previously present in Skate 3, paired with the revamped Flick-it system when on-board, fans can find and craft a play style truly their own in the massive sandbox that Skate. has to offer.