![]() From the day I first heard about this game I’ve been following it closely. I’ve come to marvel at how intelligent and character-filled birds can be, and since this game lets me play as a sulphur-crested cockatoo, I really should have loved this game. I’m a guy that feeds a flock of sulphur-crested cockatoos that hang around my home (they like sunflower seeds), a horde of pigeons that hang around for the bits the cockatoos don’t eat, and because of that we also get magpies and crows that also like to hang around. I should have absolutely loved this game. The game also promises to be a more accessible skateboarding experience than, say, Tony Hawk (which is excellent for a person like me), and it has the perfect chill blend of lo-fi beats, energetic SKATE music, and birdies chirping. Because birds are little animals, the “skate park” that you cruise around is actually just a house falling into a mess (because the human’s lacking enthusiasm in life), and so the game has a brilliant, bittersweet Micro Machines and Katamari Damacy vibe. SkateBIRD had everything going for it a brilliant concept (“look at the lil birdies pulling Tony HAWK tricks, hehe!”) and some heartfelt messaging (as limited as it is, the game weaves a heartfelt message about never giving up and doing your best, and the lil birdies miss their “big friend” human, who has a stupid new job). It does not get any better because the image update on the Nintendo Switch is sometimes way too low, which often becomes a big problem in a game that relies a lot on timing and precise controls.Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer ends up in the dictionary, and “to pull a Homer” means “to succeed despite idiocy?” Well, I reckon SkateBIRD should get a dictionary entry too: “to completely and utterly fail despite having an infallible concept.” The textures are sticky and nothing looks visually striking. Perhaps the problem is partly that the environments never feel inviting, as Skatebird is not very beautiful. Just as in the case of Pro Skater, there are a variety of smaller missions to tackle and there are also collectibles to collect. The desire to explore and try on all sorts of missions was great, but that desire never really shows up in Skatebird, even though the two games are basically so similar to each other. ![]() I played a lot of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 when I was younger and I really loved it. As you might expect, these are not normal skate parks that the birds are at, but just what you would expect birds to have done, if they were skating in reality. Pizza boxes serve as ramps and bowls filled with noodles provide grinding opportunities. skate parks, available to visit, with the first being a bedroom that you have turned into a skate park. In addition, you can decorate your bird with headphones, a Roman helmet, fisherman's hat, goggles, scarf, necklace and, of course, your skateboard. Owls, parrots, a raven, a kookaburra, the list goes on. When the adventure starts, you can choose between different kinds of birds to play as. Skatebird allows you to create an avian skater from a broad range of options. But, the fun of that series is unfortunately not nearly as present here. There are buttons to grab your board, grind, do a flip and other things you expect to be able to do, and the controls feel very much like Pro Skater. In other words, it's not like Skate at all. Those who have played one or more games from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series will quickly see Skatebird for what it is. When it comes to Skatebird, which is the closest a player could come to this desire, the dream is hardly captured in the way I had hoped. Being able to flip and trick, while tweeting away just seems like something gamers would be all over, with that presupposing that the game is good, of course. Skating as a magnificent bird is something that all video game enthusiasts have probably had a desire to do at one point in time.
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