It’s been 15 years since the release of the iconic Skate 3, and over five full years since the official announcement of a long-awaited new installment in the franchise. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re finally here; Electronic Arts’ sandbox skating bonanza is back, in what seems to be a tremendously fun reboot of sorts – coming out in Early Access as a free-to-play title this very September. EA invited us to play it for a good while on PC, and naturally we didn’t miss the opportunity to jump back into the Skate franchise. Here’s our hands-on preview of the game formerly known as Skate 4, now stylized as skate. by all accounts.
Pump the GAAS
I believe it’s only fair to tackle the elephant in the room first – unlike the previous three episodes of the franchise, released back on the 7th generation of consoles, skate. will not be a full-priced product, with Electronic Arts opting instead for a free-to-play, game-as-a-service model. That certainly raised some alarm bells – don’t tell me the new Skate is going to be a half-baked pay-to-win experience! Well, it fortunately ain’t that. By all means, everything in skate.‘s open world, every single event, every future new playable content will be free for everyone, with no competitive advantage whatsoever to those who decide to shell out some (or a lot of) cash.
It’s a bit unclear at this point how exactly the monetization will be, because in the various previews thus far, it has changed plenty. We’ve seen anything from the “Fortnite-esque” skin bundles and whatnot, to the more recent versions pushing forward a lootbox style system that would grant access to full sets, if buying enough crates for each series, with credits well earnable in-game as well via challenges and missions. It is 2025 and it’s easy to expect a bit of both, battle passes and more, but I have to reserve judgement on that because things have already changed a lot in these past months.
Yeah, okay. But is it Skate?
Of course, the monetization and the player engagement tricks can’t quite work if the game underneath isn’t solid – and Skate fans are surely wondering if this new reboot nails the basics and is truly worthy of carrying the name of one of the finest skateboarding franchises ever made, up there with the legendary Tony Hawk Pro Skater series which, coincidentally, also came back this year. The short answer is: mostly, yes. In terms of the pure mechanics, it’s all there. The open world to explore, the session markers you can place to restart from a point of choice, the many challenges across the map, all the way down to the right stick graphic below showing your exact trick inputs. This is Skate, there’s no doubt about that.
What that means, in practice, is that you have to forget the muscle memory you recently may have formed with the aforementioned Tony Hawk games. That series has always been a lot more arcadey, with speed, momentum and balance far easier to keep, and thus with extreme tricks at the tip of your fingertips. Skate offers a more manual approach, with even the speed to adjust via feet pushes, and most of the tricks actually performed by flicking your right stick in the general way you’d “actually do” the tricks on the skate. This reboot essentially offers that again, pretty much completely nailing what people want from this franchise.
Not in a Fortnight
What is slightly less loyal to the Skate experience is skate.‘s aesthetic choices. Compared to even the most recent episode in the franchise, Skate 3, this new chapter employs a far less gritty and realistic, and certainly a bit more cartoony presentation. No, it’s not as colourful and cartoony as, say, Fortnite (hence the header’s pun), but the game’s fictional big city called… San Vansterdam, is certainly a bit more bright and less gray than what we’d expect. Still, I find this change to be more than fine, as there’s still a focus on a fairly realistic look, ragdoll physics, urban environments and so forth. The human characters, playable or otherwise, are also not extremely detailed, but realistic in their design – as it should be in a Skate game.
While much of the game’s structure reminisces Skate titles of the past, skate. adds the social interaction of games like Forza Horizon—skaters can, indeed, find other riders while minding their own business, as matchmaking will have us share the virtual playground with fellow players. At that point, we can decide to check their stats, info, team up for some events and more, no doubt making the skateboarding adventure a far less lonely one. At that point, with them on our side or without, we can go through the many trick-based events around the open world, which slowly unravels in front of our very eyes, as new and new areas and events can be unlocked by leveling up.
Climbing into the Future
The game certainly offers a lot of freedom in terms of traversal, with even a lot of climbable surfaces that allow the players to get to high spots otherwise not reachable via skate. Indeed, as per Skate tradition, hopping off the skateboard and going on foot is quite the seminal part of the experience – and so is smashing your head into the concrete as you fail a trick. Even the new Quick Drop feature is in, which is effectively just a revamped version of what we could already do in Skate 3 – place ramps, grindable objects and more with ease, wherever we want, for then us and other players to trick our hearts out on. At the risk of sounding repetitive – at its core, skate. really is Skate. Following lines, doing tricks with your right stick (with even an optional simplified control method for newcomers), doing challenges across the city… this is what I always liked about the series, and in a mechanical sense there’s nothing noticeably wrong with it. It’s hardly too innovative, but over 15 years passed Skate 3, so I’m fine with a safe approach.
All doubts, really, linger around this new free-to-play model. Unlocking new areas, challenges, leveling up your character, the paid cosmetics… much of this will have to be evaluated properly once we get our hands on the “finished” product. I put that in brackets, because not only a GAAS like this is hardly ever truly done, but also because the game is launching merely in Early Access/Game Preview on September 16th, 2025, on current and last-gen consoles alike, so there’s still tons of new content, improvements and changes to expect.
If Electronic Arts play their cards right, they have a very solid foundation to build the future of Skate upon, though the lack of the traditional “full game experience” and the addition of player engagement tricks to be expected from a free-to-play game won’t be liked by everyone. But skate. is as fun as this series can and should be, and I’m personally intrigued to see where the future leads us.
