Skater XL Review – Does it Redefine the Genre? (Xbox One)

Skater XL Key Art No Logo

Skater XL is the newest game to try and meet the likes of Activision’s Tony Hawk Pro Skater and EA’s Skate; but does it hold its own? That’s what I’m here to find out, with the game peaking my own interest since its initial announcement. Below, we’ll go into a deep dive of in my review of Skater XL from Easy Day Studios and decide once and for all if it redefines the skateboarding video game genre we’ve come to cherish to dearly to our hearts.

With Skate and Tony Hawk games being assumed dead at that point, I had to get my hands on Skater XL and compare it to the giants of the genre we know today.

Skater XL starts you off with the tutorial immediately, which isn’t always necessary in games but I warn you to not skip this tutorial.

5 minutes into Skater XL and I realized this was the hardcore sandbox skating game every Skate and Tony Hawk fan has been waiting for and it does its damn job of sticking out from the rest within the genre a lot presumed to be dead.

Skater XL Basics

Skater XL Review Xbox One Easy Day Studios Basics Tutorial
Credit: Easy Day Studios

First off, Skater XL immediately separates itself from others within the skateboarding genre while simultaneously combining elements of its predecessors.

From the second you start playing to whenever you decide to put that controller down, you’ll see your controller presented on the bottom left part of the screen. You’ll see that the left stick and right stick are colored differently with blue representing your left foot and red representing your right foot.

The reason for this is to stimulate your brain and imprint left for left and right for right and when you switch from regular to mongo it certainly helps with the confusion to see which foot

When doing challenges, this will also show what you did with the controller if you fail a challenge, so you can improve upon such mistakes when compared to what you should be doing.

Choose Your Concrete Playground

Skater XL Review Xbox One Easy Day Studios Official Maps
Credit: Easy Day Studios

One of the core concepts of Skater XL is that nothing is to be unlocked, everything you could ever need is available to you immediately.

There is even a community that creates content for other users to download for free, similar to Create-A-Park features in the Skate franchise which allowed the community to share their custom skateparks.

There are several maps to choose from in Skater XL from two different categories: Official Maps and Community Maps.

READ MORE: Adios Review – A long way to say goodbye (PC)

Official Maps found within Skater XL are maps created by the Easy Day Studios team while Community Maps are, you guessed it, created by the community. There are 5 Official Maps and 3 Community Maps.

Official Maps

  • Easy Day High School
  • The Big Ramp
  • Downtown Los Angeles
  • California Skatepark
  • West L.A. Courthouse
Skater XL Review Xbox One Easy Day Studios Community Maps
Credit: Easy Day Studios

Community Maps

  • Hudland
  • Streets
  • Grant Park, Chicago

I found it really interesting that all locations are based on real life locations to create an even more immersive experience and turn this game into more of skateboarding simulator.

Sandbox Dreams

Once you’ve selected a Map you can roam around for literally the rest of your life if you so choose. I know that this is the feature that mostly everyone that plays any skateboarding game prefers usually.

Personally, I am not one of those people and not for any specific reason either because I do spend a lot of time free roaming, doing my own thing.

During this review of Skater XL you should know I caught myself doing a lot of free roaming and losing track of time so I’m sure anyone else playing will too.

When it comes to these games, I’ve always preferred to play the events of whatever story mode type of stuff there was going on.

Not only does it make me feel more in depth with what I’m doing but also gives me narrative, drive and direction and I just get more enjoyment that way.

Although challenging at times, I think we all enjoy the struggle of getting all of the letters in S-K-A-T-E in the Tony Hawk series and earning those bragging rights. This is only a more hardcore, realistic version of that.

Skater XL Replaces a Story Mode With Challenges

Once you think you’ve gotten familiar, or bored enough, with a map you can give yourself a challenge or just increase your skills or learn something new with challenges.

Each Map has its own challenges that you can do to fill your time and get even that little bit better at performing basic tricks, flips tricks and more while all getting more familiar with the map and finding your own lines.

Skater XL Review Xbox One Easy Day Studios Basic Tricks Tutorial Challenges
Credit: Easy Day Studios

Each map’s challenges there’s several categories to choose from to master and turn all of this hard work into muscle memory.

  • Basic Tricks
  • Flip Tricks
  • Advanced Flip Tricks
  • Grabs
  • Manuals
  • Powerslides
  • Grinds
  • Basic Lines
  • Advanced Lines

Each category puts you through the motions of the basic tricks in different combinations but also teaches you something new in each category or puts you in a specific situation that you need to master that other skill you just learned a little differently.

Basic tricks are the basic jumps and rotations such as ollies, nollies and 180s or 360s.

Flip tricks combine basic tricks with which stick is which between ollie and nollie tricks and show you the best places to be dropping in or preparing tricks on the map you’re playing.

Grabs are a new element compared to the others but still combines what was already learned to further advance your skills. Grabs also throw 2 new buttons into the mix, adding the bumper buttons to the combo to perform proper grabs.

Grinds teach you everything you need to know about combining what you’ve already learned with how to properly and best get on to a rail and successfully land a trick.

Manuals are simply done by slightly titling back either stick compared to flicking it for other tricks. Adding manuals to your combos can help you extend your lines by a long way if done properly.

Powerslides are done when you land on the board out of a trick into the nose or tail and slow down or turn the board, nontraditional to the side to slide and stop, also extending your lines if done properly.

Each map has a different set of challenges to perform different tricks at various spots throughout.

I started my review of Skater XL under the impression that there were no challenges or story type content so to when I found out about challenges I was pretty excited to attempt them all.

READ MORE: SKATE 4 Announced by EA’s New Studio Full Circle

Skater XL Even Provides That Little Something Extra

This game had a lot of hype for its standout realistic elements so while I was excited to review Skater XL for that reason, I suppose I abandoned the idea of customization.

So when I not only discovered character customization but Pro skaters and real brands I immediately got to work on creating my skater and browsing the Pro and their options as well.

As you can see below, there are 4 Pros to choose from, besides creating a male or female custom character.

With brands like Spitfire, Element, Huf and more there’s a lot of possibilities to make your skater uniquely yours.

Skater XL Review Xbox One Easy Day Studios Customize Skater Edit
Credit: Easy Day Studios

You can not only customize your skater’s, male or female, appearance but you can also customize your deck with everything from trucks to your deck to the wheels and even the griptape.

I thought the rabbit hole ended there but just when I thought that and finished my skater, I further explored the menu and found “Mod Browser” two sections below “Character”, where you can find character customization.

Mod Browser is where you can find community made things gear and maps for your specific platform. Currently there is a selection of 6 maps to download to your Skater XL game from the Xbox Skater XL Mod Browser.

Skater XL Review Xbox One Easy Day Studios Mod Browser Shop Parks
Credit: Easy Day Studios

Gear you will find within the Xbox Mod Browser are items such as Gold Chain/Silver Chain Shirts that give the illusion of chains around your skater’s neck.

Other items you can find here are tattoos, grip tape styles, decks, shoes, entire clothes collections and more.

Skater XL Review Xbox One Easy Day Studios Mod Browser Shop
Credit: Easy Day Studios

The store is updated from time to time and currently holds 49 pages worth of items to download for free to your game as content.

Overall, for my Skater XL review I’d say the game absolutely delivers in reviving the genre and simultaneously being something new all on its own and it even includes a killer soundtrack to really get you into the groove.

A small studio putting in the amount of work necessary to not only make this game beyond fun and true to the cores of skateboarding is nothing short of incredible.

At times, the movement does feel a little fixed but only to the extent of doing exactly what it takes to fulfill a challenge, I’ve noticed, but other than that and one or two smaller details I believe the game is quite smooth.

Overall, I hope to see Skater XL continue to receive updates in the future.

Skater XL (Xbox One)

7.3

Gameplay

8.6/10

Graphics

6.8/10

Features

8.3/10

Story/Challenges

5.4/10

Music

7.2/10

Pros

  • Smooth gameplay
  • Constant customization options
  • Community driven
  • Makes an old genre feel new again

Cons

  • Graphics glitch out here and there, sometimes causing top half of the screen to flash rapidly
  • When difficult also confusing

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