Alternate Control Methods
When you can’t deal with the Balance Board anymore you can guide your skater with the Wii remote. In theory it is cool to be able to steer just by tilting the remote, but in practice this is almost as tricky as using the Balance Board.
Sooner or later you will give up on the other methods and use the Wii remote and nunchuk together. In this method you use the nunchuk analog stick to steer, which makes things a lot easier. Unfortunately, it also takes away most of what makes Skate It appealing. Using the most conventional control scheme makes the game feel like a rather bland, pared down, unimaginative retread of Skate.
Even though I have spent most of this review complaining, there is something engaging about Skate It. It is genuinely cool to pull off rail grinds and flip tricks using your body rather than your thumbs, and when it works it is great. True, it doesn’t work most of the time, but I do feel a strong, sick temptation to just keep playing day after day until I master the Balance Board.
Some Final Thoughts
It would probably take me less time and effort to simply learn to skateboard. And as Joaquin points out, mastering the Balance Board would not even help me that much in learning to use a real skateboard, because unlike a skateboard, the Balance Board requires no actually balance.
But I will still take the Balance Board over the real thing, because even if it as difficult as real skateboarding, and possibly as physically exhausting, you don’t, no matter how high you jump or how fast you hurtle downhill, crack your skull open on the pavement when things go wrong. Skate It is for those who want ambulance-free skateboarding.
