I skated in high school. Not well, mind you, but I enjoyed it, and it was an excuse to roam around town hanging with my friend group at the time. My first experience with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was a generic bootleg CD onto which a buddy had pirated/burned an early unfinished concept build he found; we played that little demo/leaked build until the wheels came off. I enjoyed the introduction of flick controls when the Skate franchise drifted into town, and spent plenty of evenings just exploring, trying to pull off interesting lines and challenges.

All’s that to say I was excited to get my hands on the new iteration of Skate, which hit free-to-play early access this week. That excitement quickly started to bleed out after getting the game installed. I don’t know how else to describe it apart from “soulless.” Like, the skating felt really good, mechanically speaking. But nothing else feels like skateboarding. Not the music, not the culture or the vibe, definitely not the little AI robot that acts as your companion, or the super sterile, government-approved skate-utopia that you’re given to roll around.

It’s dull, it has no voice; it’s skateboarding boiled down to its most bland and “marketable” by a corporation. And though the game is in “early access” and by definition unfinished, it is buried under season pass and cosmetics store that looks thoroughly polished and finished, in a cart before horse scenario.

There are plenty of games to play this fall, so whatever. It’d have been nice to kick back and skate some evenings away, but this is going to be a hard pass for me. It’s just missing personality.