Skate May Have Hit An Impressive, But It Needs To Bring Back This Fan Favorite Feature
Hall of Pain worthy.
Skate’s 15-year journey to becoming a live service game has seemingly been well worth it. Less than a month after its public early access launch, developer Full Circle announced that Skate has reached an impressive milestone few games of its kind ever reach.
More than 15 million players have dropped into Skate since it released September 16. It’s an undeniably impressive figure in an era where the viability of newer live service games is on the decline. But there has been a lot working in its favor since its highly anticipated launch. This new, free-to-play version of Skate translates the last game’s meme-worthy virality extremely well, quickly becoming one of the biggest games on Twitch and social media. It also doesn’t sacrifice the core of what made the original series fun in the process.
This true-to-form approach may have disappointed some critics who lambasted its squeaky-clean presentation and simplified mission structure. But for those looking to cruise around with friends catching air and nailing cool tricks, Skate fills a gaming gap that has been missing for far too long. Despite its larger successes, however, there’s one feature from past games that I miss more than any other: the Hall of Meat.
Falling means nothing in the new Skate game, and that’s a big departure from the 2000s-era classics.
If you’re not familiar, the Hall of Meat was an ever-present minigame in the older Skate games. Any time the player took a rough spill off their board, the game would tally the player's injuries (typically counting how many broken bones) and reward them with points. The name was pulled directly from Thrasher Magazine, which would highlight the worst (but also best) skateboarding spills into entertaining compilations under the same moniker.
As morbid as it sounds, the Hall of Meat made the act of bailing both hilarious and competitive. The game’s frustrating Death Races, which saw a dozen skaters racing dangerously downhills through traffic and sidewalks, were made a little easier when your player could skid their face across 100 feet of pavement and get a score for it. A gutsy stunt off a 50-story building could result in the most horrific crash and burn you’d ever seen. There were entire in-game challenges dedicated to incurring the most brutal fall you could. It was a genius addition that added new dimension to the game’s most frequent fail state.
In the new Skate, however, the Hall of Meat doesn’t exist and its absence is felt. Falls now just feel like a necessary part of trying to finish every challenge in the game so far, and nothing more.
The new Skate game unnecessarily explains away the lack of injuries. A big tech company called Impervatek has rendered all skaters invincible, meaning players just pop back up no matter how brutal the spill. But in doing that, it robs the game of some of that irreverent, skater-adjacent personality it had. There’s a reason why “bail compilations” and shows like Jackass were huge.
You can, of course, still have great falls. The official Skate account is even asking the community to submit their best ones. But there was something timelessly fun about seeing an X-ray of your skater’s body after a bad slam paired with some hilarious commentary to go along with it. Without it, these challenges don’t feel like the Skate of old, and that’s a bummer.
Skate is in an early access game, so the developers can always implement the old system. And with the team already working to implement moves from Skate 3 like the Darkslide, the return of the Hall of Meat feels inevitable. However, it’s a shame that this wasn’t one of the many core systems they incorporated on day one. And until it’s back, I expect the fan base to be clamoring for it.
If you haven’t jumped into Skate yet, now’s as good a time as ever to do so. The game’s first season kicks off October 7, and includes new additions to the game’s stellar soundtrack, new challenges, and most importantly, new spots to skate around the city of San Vansterdam.
