Within five minutes of sitting down to play Helskate at Gamescom, lead game designer Steve Swink said to me “It feels like you’ve played this game before.” I felt the same way too. Swink worked on Tony Hawk’s Underground, and Helskate was like a skeleton key to unlock my🦄 muscle memory.
Melon? Left and B. Heelflip? Right and X. Nosegrind? Up and Y. It borrows liberally from the Tony Hawk’s control scheme, but it never feels stolen. That’s firstly because the dev himself was there for the original, but mostly because what it uses these mechanics for is completely different in its application. The fact it’s a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tony Hawk’s game underneath only removes what could have otherwise been a hidden hurdle: it’s not too far removed fro🍒m the fact all shooter games all u✅se left trigger to aim and right to shoot.
Helskate is therefore a skating game in the same way 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Grand Theft Auto is a shooting game. You’re pushing the same buttons, but there’s far more to it. It’s more accurately a roguelike where you ride deeper and deeper into hell, exploring abandoned skating spots and competing with other skaters for infernal rewards while battling demons. These heelflips and nosegrinds aren’t just for looking cool or even raising youꦓr high score. Instead, landing bigger combos boosts your attacks, while you can runಌ through randomised dungeons to collect better weapons, stat boosts, or power-ups.
The basis of the game’s inception was that Swink spent a lot of time considering the stat points back in Tony Hawk’s, and saw the RPG potential in them. In the games, you’d have stats in things like speed, air, and balance, all of which impacted the skating, but they felt a little superfluous. Since the skaters were based on real life skaters who were given default stats, the system was fixed rather than malleable. Helskate explores them from an RPG perspective, and while all three of the above are still in the game to improve yꦦour skating, you’ll also be able to improve your health and attacking powers, as well as some skills that will improve both skating and combat.
Quantifying the gameplay itself is a strange experience. Skating-wise, it feels just like Tony Hawk’s. It’s uncanny. And it feels odd, maybe even a little insulting, to discuss another game so much after the first hands-on preview Helskate has had. But for a lot of people, that will be at least half the selling point. If you put💟 the roguelike structure and demon-killing to one side, it’s the perfect recreation of Tony Hawk’s. There’s no revert to manual when landing on ramps, but purists would say that’s the ideal Tony Hawk’s experience anyway. They’d be wrong. But they’d say it nonetheless.
Even though the roguelike part is what it does differently to the Tony Hawk’s series, it does feel under less pressure than the skating itself. It can afford to get that ‘wrong’ and style it out - skaters do it all the time, calling the missed execution of one trick a different, new trick instead - but with the skating, it needs to be the skating. I’d also need a little longer with it. I knew after the fi🅠rst combo that the skating was in safe hands, but as roguelikes are meant to evolve, it’s hard to know how I feel about slaying dem♏ons.
When I began playing, it was pretty basic. But then, of course it was fairly basic on my first run at the start of a roguelike. When I was skipped deeper into the game to see a later-game build, it was a little overwhelming. But then, of course it was a little overwhelming to be skipped ahead on a roguelike without building up the knowledge of how the game behaves. The biggest takeaway was that ranged attacks seemed far more useful and intuitive than melee ones, and that spraying ninja stars while holding a manual gave me the same sense of power I got in Hades when I was able to double up on the bomb boon.
You’re going to get janky cameras in a skating game, especially one in early build, but making too wide a turn to smash the demons to smithereens is the biggest hurdle I can see Helskate falling at. Or maybe the slipperiest rail I can see it sliding off and whacking its nuts on when it comes ⛦to early access on PC next year. Either way, Helskate is a skating roguelike that is mainly going to attract people for its skating, and thankfully that is the part that is absolutely perfect. Or at least it would be with manual revert.
