Posted this in the Skate thread already but anyway...
I got the new TH demo last night and after playing it for a while had to turn it off an put Skate back on. It just feels like a backwards step for skating games. Dont get me wrong, I thought it was still good for a TH game, but it doesnt really offer anything new and compared to Skate it just feels like a button bashing excercise. The graphics dont seem any improvement over P8 either and the level design is purely for the massive combos with all the roller-coaster style lines, yet nothing that you would actually want to skate in real life. After 5 minutes I was basically on auto-pilot… just tapping away without really looking, next thing I knew I'd racked up near enough a 400K combo and had travelled around the level about 5 times.
I know what you're saying about the controls clicking back into place Guns, but I dunno if I really like that. For the last however many TH I've been able to turn then on 1st time and start getting stupidly large combos straight away, even with low stats... it just feels like there's no challenge any more. As I said above, it's like being on auto-pilot. Also, because of the levels being designed for that style of play, I get bored because I can just session something simple like a bank to rail or even just a nice ledge down some steps. Well, you can but it's not as satifying as it is in Skate as there's zero realism.
I just hope that the gaming public see Skate for the amazing game that it is and give it a chance. I think a lot of people might be put of because of the initially steep learning curve, which is a shame because once you master it then it's one of the most rewarding games on the 360 at the moment.
I'm definatey a Skate convert, even more so after playing the new TH demo