Review by: Michael Barnes

Shaun White Skateboarding definitely isn’t a Tony Hawk or Skate game in a curly red wig and matchstick jeans. Surprisingly, it’s an experimental and nearly innovative mixture of its predecessors with some conceptual elements from Jet Set Radio.

Look closely enough at the “shaping” mechanic, where your skater creates ramps, rails, and streets, and you might be reminded of Kirby’s Canvas Curse. And yes, that ball-rolling terminal hacking minigame does resemble Super Monkey Ball. The story mode, which has more of a narrative than the entire Pro Skater series combined, demonstrates traces of the movies Footloose and Pleasantville as well as George Orwell’s 1984. I’m not kidding. The bad news is that I’m not sure the game quite knows what to do with its cleverness and it pulls up short from emerging as a serious, potentially game-changing competitor.

Shaun White’s first skateboard game is an open world, free-roaming affair with a big city littered with all kinds of grindable surfaces, empty pools, challenges, and collectibles. What makes the game unique is the ability to literally influence and change the environment by maintaining “flow”. Keep doing tricks and combos, and your ability to influence the world goes up. Ramps might pop up out of the ground, Trees blossom. Boring suit-and-tie drones turn into cool guys sending text messages and hanging out. A shuttered skate shop might open for business with a cool Transformers-like animation. The shapeable green rails, verts, and streets can literally be guided as you ride them (this is the Canvas Curse part), enabling you to reach otherwise unreachable areas.

There’s more focus and structure than in most open world games, and it keeps things moving. The next story mission is always available and evident, so that aimless feeling that often plagues other skating games is somewhat alleviated. Sure, you can still goof off and just ride around, but there are more concrete goals than winning a tournament or unlocking a new board. The fate of the world is at stake, man!

The game is set in a fictional, dystopian city without color where everyone wears dull gray suits. Skateboarding, contrary to the popular bumper sticker, is in fact a crime. It seems that skating is creative and liberating so it’s therefore dangerous to the conformist society controlled by the Ministry. And that makes Shaun White Public Enemy number one. It’s a good thing they’ve never seen this guy snowboard, they’d lose their minds.

Your customizable character enters the game as Shaun is being incarcerated in a Ministry correctional facility. He passes his skateboard and clothes to you, and suddenly you’re transformed into skating rebel just by touching his stuff. As the story progresses, you wind up falling in with Shaun’s ragtag bunch of revolutionaries, “The Rising”. They’re based out of an amusement park, and they’re locked in mortal struggle for the hearts and minds of the oppressed citizens. Your character meets, trains with, and of course gets quests from the various members of The Rising while Shaun is locked up. Unfortunately, these characters are written just north of Jar-Jar Binks level of irritating and their dialogue is truly atrocious. I literally cringed every time someone started talking, particularly Fernando, a catalog of Latino stereotypes.