Amazing, but...

This game is good enough to make me feel addicted to it.

I skated for years, and I love the controls. It is precisely this realism that makes it so much fun.

But every time I start playing, I'm immediately reminded that, in their quest for realism, the map designers made a game that is as frustrating as it is enjoyable.

There are awesome skate spots all over the game that are unskateable because there's a lamp post, bag of trash, or bump in the sidewalk that gets in the way.

Often times you'll find a beautiful handrail with insufficient runway to approach, or no space to ride away at the bottom.

I understand that the world is not a perfectly skateable place. Fine. That's real life, and skateboarding is supposed to be hard. But the hard part of skateboarding that's beautiful is not the bench in the way of that ledge you want to kickflip back tail. It's the fight for the trick, and when you land it, it's divine experience.

I can appreciate playing a skateboarding game in a realistic environment, one that is not optimized for skateboarding. (E.g. I don't need every public fountain to have a quarter-pipe built into it). But developers shouldn't build environments that make the game harder to play, either.

Ok, I'm done. See you in the streets.