Skate Story Is a Beautiful Nightmare on Four Wheels

If you’ve ever played a skateboarding game, you probably know the drill: hit the ramp, spin until you’re dizzy, land a 900-degree combo, and if you bail, your character just goofy-flops onto the concrete and gets back up. Skate Story, released this past December on PS5, takes that formula and smashes it into a million pieces—literally.

Developed by Sam Eng and published by the tastemakers at Devolver Digital, Skate Story is what happens when you mix a skate video with a fever dream.

It’s undeniably one of the most stylish games of the year, but be warned: beneath that cool, vaporwave exterior lies a game that demands patience, precision, and a high tolerance for pain.

Skate Story: The Devil Wears Grip Tape

The premise is immediately gripping. You aren’t a pro skater looking for a sponsorship; you’re a demon in the Underworld made entirely of glass. The Devil hands you a skateboard and offers a deal: skate to the moon, eat it, and you win your freedom. It’s weird, poetic, and sets the stakes incredibly high.

Because you are made of glass, you are fragile. In Tony Hawk, crashing is a slap on the wrist. In Skate Story, it’s a death sentence. Hitting a wall or landing wrong causes you to shatter instantly, forcing a restart from the last checkpoint. This changes the entire psychology of skating. You aren’t trying to look cool for points; you are skating to survive. It adds a layer of tension that I’ve never felt in a sports game before.

Rhythm Over Realism

If you’re coming from Skate 3 or Session, you might need to rewire your brain. The controls here don’t rely on flicking the analog sticks to simulate foot movement. Instead, it’s a rhythmic, button-based system. You hold a button to crouch and charge your energy, then release it to pop an ollie. While you’re in the air, you use directional inputs to modify your tricks.

It feels less like a physics simulation and more like a rhythm game. You have to get into a “flow state,” timing your button releases with the visual cues and the beat of the music. When it clicks, it feels snappy and satisfying, letting you carve through the neon-soaked levels with a sense of purpose. But when it doesn’t click, it can feel stiff. You can’t just mash buttons and hope for the best; you have to be deliberate, or you’ll end up as a pile of broken glass on the floor.

A Vibe You Can Feel

The presentation is, without a doubt, the game’s strongest asset. The visuals are a stunning mix of dark, brutalist architecture and bright, neon lights that reflect off your crystalline body. It looks incredible on a 4K TV, especially with HDR enabled. The soundtrack by Blood Cultures is a perfect match—a hazy, psychedelic mix of indie pop and synth that lulls you into a trance.

On the PS5, the DualSense controller does some heavy lifting to ground this surreal experience. The haptic feedback is some of the best I’ve felt. You can genuinely feel the difference in texture between skating on smooth marble versus rough brick through the vibrations in your hands. The triggers add a nice bit of resistance when you’re pushing for speed, making the physical act of skating feel weighty and grounded.

However, performance has been a bit of a mixed bag. While the base PS5 runs the game reasonably well, there have been reports of frame rate stutters, particularly on the new PS5 Pro model, which seems to struggle with the game’s unique transparency effects. For a game that requires split-second timing, any lag is a major issue.

The Breaking Point

The biggest hurdle for most players will be the difficulty. The “shattering” mechanic is thematically brilliant but mechanically frustrating. The checkpoints can sometimes feel unforgiving, forcing you to replay long sections of a level just because you clipped a curb at the very end.

This isn’t a game where you can turn your brain off and chill. It requires intense focus. The linear “dash” levels, where you have to speed through a tunnel of obstacles without crashing, can become trial-and-error endurance tests. It’s a game that wants you to feel the protagonist’s pain, and sometimes, it succeeds a little too well.

Verdict

Skate Story is a work of art that happens to be a skateboarding game. It reinvents the genre by stripping away the safety nets and replacing them with high-stakes tension and atmospheric storytelling. It’s breathtaking to look at and listen to, and the DualSense implementation makes it feel fantastic to play—when you aren’t shattering into oblivion.

If you are looking for a chill sandbox to trick around in, this probably isn’t it. But if you want a unique, challenging experience that pushes the boundaries of what a sports game can be, Skate Story is a trip worth taking. Just be prepared to break a few times along the way.

Pros and Cons