Like Eating Glass – Skate Story (PC) Review

The first time I ever got on a skateboard, I fell flat on my back and my friend’s board zoomed out in front of me. Effectively I Lucy Van Pelt’d myself and spent the rest of that summer learning how to at least ride on a board. Growing up in a Jersey suburb, the summers where my friends were invested in skating made for some pretty fun afternoons of watching them ollie off ledges, trip over their boards trying to do flip tricks, and get fucked up after bailing on some particularly gnarly jumps or tricks. Falling in momentum really fucking sucks, having had those experiences more regularly while ice skating or rollerskating (I’d post the photo I took the last time I went but it’s kinda narsty). Skating, culturally, recognizes that and turns it into a shared pain, circling back around to an uplifting humiliation ritual. For every perfectly landed 900, you have files upon files of people eating shit, losing teeth, exposing bone, and cheesing it for the camera. 

The lack of that grit makes the recent iterations of the Tony Hawk and Skate series so jarring after all this time. THPS 3 + 4, despite it featuring one of my favorite artists’ songs that sneaks in lyrics like “currently it’s obvious there is no Constitution,” feels confined to PS1 nostalgia even while trying to adapt titles in the series that iterated beyond the initial two installments. skate. is still in development and doing what it can to sand down the original series’ edges. You don’t get body checked by cops anymore, and falling off buildings is fine because you have Not Amazon funded super goo in you now! The games are still there mechanically, but it’s saddening to see these giants miss the initial edge of the medium they’re emulating. For the last decade I would hear the occasional yearning for a new skateboarding game, but it’d feel similar to the way I’d tilt my head to the sky and mutter “yeah that was cool” about the old plaid Enjoi deck with black and white trucks and wheels I owned to timidly cruise around my neighborhood. 

Skate Story is grimy as fuck, and it rules so hard for that. I initially heard about this game about 3 years ago, and immediately fell in love with the presentation. It’s a game I’ve waited for in the corner, knowing it would eventually come, trying not to overhype myself for this thing I knew I wanted to enjoy for myself. In Skate Story you play as a demon in the underworld with a universal desire: to eat the moon. As a demon made of wire it’s an impossible task, but the demon stumbles upon a contract that bestows upon them a body of glass and a skateboard. Made of glass and pain, the demon shreds through the endless night in their quest to eat the moon. Sam Eng’s Faustian love letter to the extreme sport succeeds by making failure so much fucking fun. You will crash in this game. A lot. You get achievements for failing to land tricks after a while, to put it in perspective just how often you’ll be eating shit. 

For those who are coming to this game with experience in the button prompt or flick stick methods of trick delivery, Skate Story’s approach to shredding takes a minute to adjust to. Ollies are done with the Circle/B button and other flip tricks are performed by adding presses of the triggers and bumpers to your held ollie. Right next to your skater you’ll see shapes traced with a dot, portions of these shapes shaded in green to indicate the optimal height for your jump or landing for your trick. The harder the trick the tighter the timing, and other button combinations color in abilities like reverts and spins, while grinds borrow the Skate approach of hitting a rail just right with your ollies. 

Altogether, the glass demon shreds with abandon and every perfectly crafted line is built from a mountain of crashes and tumbles. The act of failing is also done spectacularly: every crash results in the camera dropping to the ground and rolling until it catches the shards of your body against the various nighttime scenes you shred past. At no point did I feel frustrated about falling off my board or having to redo a session. The physics are a little rough, but for a game that’s focused on a deeper descent into the dreamlike, it’s not a dealbreaker. I learned to get comfortable with the weight of the glass skater and use momentum in a way that amplified the desperation felt in getting through each chapter.

The demon traverses several layers of the underworld to complete their late night snack quest. Each moon – surprise, you’re eating more than one moon on this eternal night – casts a heavy shadow on each area you skate past. I can’t emphasize just how beautiful this game looks with its deep shadows lit by fluorescent yellows, blues, and reds. There’s a karaoke bar I go to sometimes, its concrete bar counter along with furniture and trinkets to resemble a goth nightclub, and throughout the space there’s anime memorabilia and rows of manga. It’s eclectic and spacious and with the lights set low and the candles lit, there’s something comforting about the crowds singing top 40 hits throughout the night while I sip on a beer. That’s the kind of atmosphere that Skate Story evokes in its coloring and geometry. The game feels hellishly hostile, but the very act of skating is in defiance of that hostility. Every elevated ledge becomes an opportunity to grind, every jagged bramble and hurdle another chance to bust out a new trick. 

The poorly kept secret here is that the entire game is styled after New York City, and I’m a ride or die for Skate Story as a result. Within minutes of getting your board, you speed down a dreamy version of the Manhattan Bridge bike lanes, you see the backdrop of skyscrapers and scaffolding in the distance whenever you walk through new areas. Sam Eng dedicated time to record sounds of the subway cars screeching to their stops and put that in this game. I freaked the fuck out because it’s a sound I know all too well at this point in my life! To see the Washington Square Park arch modeled in a hellscape amidst skeletons pining over a previous life of regret is cool as fuck, I don’t know what else to tell you. 

Adding to the atmosphere is Skate Story’s soundtrack. Blood Cultures and John Fio went nuts in the studio to create a soundscape that is so addictive to listen to and makes the rush of building your line all the more satisfying and alluring. I’ll be honest, I get really annoyed when people cling to genre norms as a determiner of whether or not something does the genre “correctly.” Easiest nitpick here: your skating game doesn’t have to copy the old THPS soundtrack song per song. Skate Story plays around with atmospheric electronic sounds one level, then in the next level you’re getting hard hitting EDM. You ponder in one scene and then you shake ass in another while you start hitting kickflips and varials. One of the hubs does have a ska inspired track, but we’re talking about 1st wave, fresh off the heels of reggae, where it’s less mozzarella sticks and more hanging out in places where you could get your ass kicked. The boss themes are impeccable as well, each track fully playable within a time limit, so you can juggle your time between full-on listening and getting your combo up. There’s something beautiful about hitting gnarly flip tricks while a song with bright synths and samples of Bernie Wagenblast reading out train numbers plays in full blast. 

Skate Story, by design, is a game about friction. While customizing your board, you have the option to manage the tightness of your trucks. (For people who haven’t fiddled with a board, those are the axles that keep your wheels in place.) Loose trucks make it easier to apply pressure on your board to turn or do tricks, but also feel wobbly at high speeds. Tighter trucks allow for more stability when you really ramp up in speed, which happens a lot in the slalom sections of the game. There’s no right way to set your trucks, but taking the time to figure out what feels good to you goes a long way in making the game a personal experience. 

Skate Story is imperfect and it’s so good for that. I even had moments where the geometry would glitch out and force me out of the bounds of the world in a void of hazy amber light. There are moments where trying for a complicated flip trick doesn’t exactly work, but you still throw something out for the sake of your line and try to keep your momentum. As someone who never once managed a flip trick, the intricacies of how to plant your feet to affect the angle before getting air can get overwhelming. There’s a layer of fumbling intrinsic to the mechanics where mastery is less about never getting off your board and more about how quickly you get back on your board after bailing. I think back on games like Hi-Fi Rush where having zero context of the game and learning on the fly did so much to make that experience special by the end. I won’t speak on the ending not because of spoilers, but because it’s an experience you deserve to have for yourself. It’s the kind of thing where I do wish I could experience it for the first time again. 

It’s been tough to play video games this year, if I have to be honest. I’ve had this block of wanting the right time to indulge in the hobby, and that time rarely comes. If I’m not busy with new anime or shows, then I’m out and about in the real world with friends or going to concerts. Even worse, my lobster is too buttery! But genuinely, playing games as a hobby has been difficult when nothing felt like it landed with me, or would take a while to really sink in for me. After nearly four years of waiting, Skate Story comes through as a solid reminder that I can always be willing to engage in art that’s so proud of being made within constraints. Yeah, this has Devolver’s name on it, but it’s truly something born out of love for skating and love for New York. There’s nights, especially in the winter, where the moon stands out amidst the dead foliage and ice cold buildings, its light reflected off puddles of rain or pitch black windows. Some nights it looks massive, blindingly white against the darkness of night. Skate Story gives an audience a look into how those nights feel, the hours spent going deeper and deeper into the dark with no certainty of when it’ll stop. A city of demons made of glass and pain, our bodies so susceptible to breaking, and yet we keep going.