VR Skater Brings The Thrills Skateboarding To VR

VR Skater, a simulator that brings one of the most popular extreme sports/pastimes to Virtual Reality. This is fully immersive skateboarding with all the thrills. Plus you can enjoy the epic spills from the comfort of your living room. But how good is it really?

Benefits of Virtual Reality for skateboarding games

As far as simulating both real-world and artificial environments, situations, and activities, Virtual Reality has always been touted as the next major step forward. And since retail targeted VR and AR (Augmented Reality) products really started to find their feet sometime around 2016, the VR gaming market has grown tremendously.

This is especially true when it comes to the available options. VR gamers have benefited from a wider selection of genres and titles to choose from. However, through all the new releases and VR registering, the void left behind by the aging of classics like Tony Hawk Pro Skater had yet to be filled.

And so to that end, an independent developer – Deficit Games set out to take skate to the next level of gaming with VR Skater. The result of that endeavor – which was made available through Steam Early Access – is what the developers call a “finely mix between arcade and realistic”.

So that means that players are able to defy the laws of physics – for the sake of fun –  in some instances, while the game still maintains a focus on realism, like the in-game environments.

The Gameplay of VR Skater

Just as it’s with the real thing, VR Skater starts the player off right at the beginning – learning how to move and pop tricks on a board, and getting it wrong countless times in the process. This is one point of the game where developers paid close attention to realism.

For example, moving forward requires that the player move one arm in the same manner as they would their leg to get the board moving. However, when moving on to learning tricks, things get a little trickier – another point where the game stays true to its real-world inspiration.

This is the same as learning to move, the movements required to perform a trick are very similar to those done by skaters in the real world – with shove-its among the hardest to get a gang on. To this particular trick right, one has to – quite aggressively – swing their arms back and forth, with precise timing. Players will struggle to achieve it.

Thankfully, the developers added multiple tutorials to help players get into the groove of skating in VR and will walk you through the process of learning to move around and finally learning a few tricks.

The feeling that comes with a successful Kickflip are far greater than the ones we got during the Tony Hawk era, that’s because VR Skater’s Kickflip takes more out of a player than simply pushing a button does.  Furthermore, this game far out performs any other skating title when it comes to experiencing a sense of the speed of skateboarding.

And the environments?

Players get to know the game inside a school on the first map. Interestingly the studio has opted out of the traditional route of skate parks. Instead, they opted to design linear environments that put a focus on Ollies and grinding.

From grinding park benches, to jumping out of windows, players will experience a level of excitement. That excitement console and screen were never able to portray. This is Virtual Reality after all.