SkateBIRD Reviews

So disappointed by this game. I remember watching a developer video a long time ago touting how the controls were so important and how easy this was going to be to control and play compared to other games by making better use of the sticks.

Skatebird simply does not deliver on this promise and cute characters can not make up for a fundamentally flawed and clunky control system.

The bird will randomly flap and jump about even through simple corners and manoeuvres, turning is slow and imprecise and jumping is unpredictable with varying heights based on your current trick meter.

Not a fun experience and the interesting sounding achievements are not compelling me to carry on. Hopefully it will improve in a few patches time and fulfil it's potential!

I went into Skatebird really wanting to like it. I love games like THPS and SKATE so having a hybrid of that with goofiness of being a round little bird seemed like a great time. I wasn't expecting it to be the new GOAT of skateboarding games but this game... I don't even know where to start really.

Lets start with the GOOD:

Skatebird 110% delivers on the BIRD. I was suprised at how many birds there were to choose from and the variety of hats and clothing options. It was kind of weird that you couldn't rotate your bird to see back pieces or what your board design was going to be but being able to stop and change your look on the fly was really nice. You didn't have to retreat back to the main menu or even restart the current area.

The Music. The starting selection of tracks are alright, nothing really amazing imo but picking up the bonus tracks is ABSOLUTELY worth it. There are some great tracks that are hidden away here. (ESCAPE FROM SKULL CITAAAAAAAY) If you enjoyed the THPS or SKATE soundtracks, you'll enjoy the songs on this one once you unlock them. Ska lives forever

Being able to set reset markers that you can warp back to at the push of a button is great. All skating games should have this.

The MEH

The writing is pretty hit or miss for me. I found myself chuckling at some of the jokes but that's bound to happen when the entire script is just constant jokes. Maybe the quirky writing will add more charm or just make you roll your eyes. You should be able to get a good feel for it within the first few missions.

The BAD and the UGLY

I've seen people arguing about the controls for the game and honestly it makes me wonder what games they've played before this. Skatebird's controls are unarguably clunky, even after 'getting used to them'. They're bad. Just plain bad. What makes the situation even worse is how bad the level design and physics are on top of this.
You can't even go back and forth in a half-pipe smoothly as Skatebird will just randomly decide to veer off in a random direction irregardless of whether you touched the movement controls.

Sometimes pushing A makes you jump, sometimes you jump and lose all momentum, sometimes you jump and flip upside down; sometimes you crash from this, sometimes you snap back right way up, sometimes you just snap 90 degress when you land and fly off a ledge or slam into a wall.

Levels feel really disjointed. It's like something slapped together in create-a-park in THPS. There is little to no flow between areas of each map. There's also big chunks of map that are just nothing. Just stretches of emptiness with nothing interesting to look at, skate on, or collect. The collision on objects is just awful. Skating in a straightline onto a ramp has caught my board and ripped out from under me or just gotten stuck. It's easy to richochet off of things and get wedged in a corner.

The quests range from okay to completely awful. The score or combo challenges are okay. The item collection or check-list challenges are mostly bad. This should be where cool lines are laid out or challenging gaps are overcome. Instead items are haphazardly scattered around with no rhyme or reason or are pathetically easy. The first level has a great example of this. You are tasked with collecting duct tape and board parts. The first roles of duct tape are along a rail you grind to a new area but then you need to hop off, come to a halt, and carefully follow a ledge around that you can't just grind. then you jump down and pick up the rest of the items that are laid out along the floor next to the wall. No ramps, no rails, no pipes. You just slide along the wall. The game is focused more on trying to be funny rather than being fun to play.

TLDR; The only good parts of this game are cosmetic. You can look at screenshots of the game or watch someone else play it for a bit. If you have gamepass it might be worth banging your head against a wall for a few hours to net the easy achievements. Under no circumstances would I ever suggest anyone pay out of pocket for this game.

This one is going to be divisive.

Complaints about difficult controls are completely justified. I did not feel truly in control of the game and its quirky physics until I hit about 4-5 hours of playtime. That being said, I had fun getting there. I think there is a certain charm to its wonkyness (ala Goat Simulator, I Am Bread, or any other physics sandbox game).
If the player keeps in mind that this game can be taken as a hybrid of those games and an arcade skater they can find some entertainment in this game.
It reminds me of the first time I played THPS (the N64 version mind you, not the remaster). There's a learning curve that can be incredibly frustrating but the game is oozing with playful charm. Also, the soundtrack is rad (ska is not dead).
If you have GamePass, give it a try. If you find you have the patience to tough out the control curve, you'll find a delightful little indie game with a fairly quick 1,000 GS.

This game is a gem. The developers have created a whole universe to satisfy us. It is revolutionary for its time since it is in 16K 240fps.

The soundtrack is grandiose, worthy of the greatest. Berlioz and Chopin are rolling over in their graves.

The gameplay is to die for. Not even Mario Galaxy comes close to it.

$10 for 16 minutes, a long-term investment because the memories will be unforgettable.

Spend time with his wife and children, why? Skatebird will fill us with happiness with its aura that pierces the screen.
I quit my job to play it.

Thank you Megan Fox .

When I first played SkateBIRD, a couple of days after it was released, I had to metaphorically shelve it because the excessively strong depth-of-field blur and the glitchy controls made the game very hard for me to navigate. However, now that a patch has enabled turning the blur effect off, I've been enjoying my time with SkateBIRD's cast of eccentric but well-meaning birds.

In terms of gameplay, SkateBIRD uses the Tony Hawk style of skating controls, where the left analogue stick controls movement and speed while the face buttons and directional inputs are used to perform tricks. There are also some concessions to the fact that you're a round bird rather than a long-legged human; the front of the skateboard leaves an orange trail and the back of the board leaves a blue trail to help you know which way your character is facing in the air.

SkateBIRD contains most of the mission types you would expect from an arcade skateboarding game, such as collecting items, achieving high scores, finding S-K-A-T-E letters, and changing or moving parts of the environment by skating on them. But unlike most extreme sports games, rather than "going pro" or winning contests, your goal here is for you and your friends to lift your Big Friend (human) out of a rut: when you're picking up items, you're stealthily cleaning their room to make them happier, and when you go to a workplace to cause chaos, you're actually making Big Friend's depressing startup office a nicer place for them to be so that they can spend more time with you.

This focus on a small-scale and caring goal gives SkateBIRD a friendly and comfortable atmosphere that makes it relaxing to play despite the undercurrent of Big Friend's struggles. This is amplified by the dialogue, which is packed with peak 2020s "lets joke about how broken the world is" humour.

The game has 4 different environments, which each hold between 10-20 small missions. While each level is a decent size and its clear what real-life environments they're replicating, their design is merely ok: none of the levels are particularly memorable and none contain any impressive set pieces. On the other hand, a lot of thought has gone into the available settings and difficulty-adjusting options for a game that can so often have questionable physics. Players can adjust different aspects of the controls such as the boosts they recieve during different parts of their push. Players can also adjust the game speed and remove the grind and manual balance meters if they need to. There are also some novelty options, such as a setting that ensures the birds won't make any unhappy noises and one which turns all of the "birb-speak" into "surfer-dude-speak" (with 11 levels of "dude").

Overall, SkateBIRD definitely delivers on the "bird" despite a few issues with the "skate". There's even a Pet the Bird mode, where you control a hand that gives pets and scritches to the bird. Its camera is a bit odd and the controls are nowhere near as fluid and responsive as the major league skateboarding games, but it works decently enough. If a Tony Hawk game had these issues, it would be very disappointing, but SkateBIRD just about gets away with its wonkiness because its atmosphere and style is the USP rather than its mechanics.

If you liked this review, pleaase check out my other reviews at www.sineadaharold.com! :)

SkateBIRD is a skateboarding game where you are a bird (which is more than likely, incredibly obvious). It was developed by a small studio, Glass Bottom Games, formed in 2011, by Megan Fox. It should take around 5 hours to complete.



The Good

It has birds, lots of birds. Birds in hats, birds with night vision goggles, big birds, little birds, green birds, blue birds, and more birds in-between. Lots of customization options, and you unlock more as you find collectibles.

Music isn't too bad, and you can toggle any/all songs. Think of PG Punk/Ska, or if the musoc in Tony Hawk was about birds.

Luckily, you can turn off mission timers in the settings, as well as turn off balancing, without these, I doubt many would 100% this.


The Bad

Repeating missions, meh maps, and awkward level design. You'll find yourself trying to navigate the large, dull maps via poorly designed ramps, that if approached at the wrong angle, cause you to bail.


The UGLY

Jank controls, get used to eating dust, and wiping out mid-combo for no reason. I cant coint how many times I'd be doing a manual on a flat surface and bit it for no reason.

While the controls wouldn't be HORRIBLE if the physics were on point, they are not. This makes trying to grind, ollie (jump), or anything else, a chore.

The camera is also a PITA and has screwed me than the IRS (ok, not really, but it's still pretty bad at times).


Overall

As of writing this, the game has a 5:1 ratio (5,009 to be exact) and I see why. The gane isn't "hard", but getting through it will test you, doubly so if you leave the settings at default.

SkateBIRD is a third-person skateboarding sports game. You play as someone's pet bird who has been trained to ride a miniature skateboard. Your owner, "Big Friend", is going through some rough times and you are on a mission to help them feel better.

Most of the game revolves around completing short missions and tasks that involve using the skateboard to accomplish some set of feats. From grinding across gaps, to transferring (think "mantling" but with a skateboard) over obstacles or through tight spaces, or simply riding around and collecting things.

Each task brings you closer to figuring out what's wrong with Big Friend and how to help them. You'll meet and enlist the aid of several other birds - some who apparently are pets along with you, and some wild birds you meet on the way. They'll give you various extra tasks to complete aside from the main "missions". Their dialog is amusing, and I actually laughed out loud reading one late-game exchange.

And I needed that laugh. It's about the only reason I gave this game 2.5 stars instead of 1. The purity of your "quest" as a pet trying to help its owner, the cast of characters, and their dialog with you and each other save this game from its own abomination.

And that abomination is just absolutely atrocious controls. There's a metric crapton of tricks you can perform, and that means overloading the buttons on the controller quite a bit. This, in turn, means that the controls are inconsistent at best. Trying to grind a rail at a tight angle? You're more like to stall or blunt than do what you're trying. Trying to slowly take a turn? Something will spontaneously cause you to pick up a shitton of speed and launch yourself over or through some obstacle that will take 20 seconds of your limited mission time to recover from.

Controlling this damned bird is just awful. The game's default control scheme inverts every axis imaginable. Press ? The camera will pan down. Press ? I can't even remember what dumb thing happens. Press ? You'll go right. For reasons. I really can't explain why this last one is the case, because it's just asinine. You can fix all of this, of course, in the game's settings. But you have to fix it to make the controls make any sense. Especially if you're coming off a first-person shooter. The panning and movement controls will just... ugh... Suck.

And then there's the camera itself. If you do ever play this game, try really, really hard not to use while moving. The second you move the bird, the camera will whip back around - which happens A LOT by itself when in half pipes - and will disorient and nauseate you. At least, it did for me. I spent the first 2 hours I played the game just fighting the camera before I resigned myself to the fact that I couldn't use it like I do with Halo or Mass Effect games to move orthogonal to the camera and strafe or just look around and find my next target. In SkateBIRD, you can use the camera to look around while stationary, but never, ever touch it while moving around.

Oh, and if you're a completionist please be aware: the people who wrote this made it so you unlock an achievement as soon as you start up. Total dick move. Fortunately, the game is a relatively easy completion. The zones are fairly small, and most missions give you ample time to finish them. The only really hard ones are the missions to rack up score. If you're not playing with the cheats enabled or balancing disabled, the twitchy controls make it so that this is almost undoable.

The cute story here really saves the game. There's not much to the gameplay. But of what there is, it's pretty miserable to play. Not having a good story or dialog to back that up would make this game utterly unplayable.

This isn't the worst game I've ever played. Still, that bar is low and I would not recommend it. At all.