VR Skater is a gem, balancing nostalgia with cutting edge technology. Not everyone is or was a skater back in the day, not everyone has played irrecoverable hours in various Tony Hawk console games. A front side nose slide may be indistinguishable from a backside tail slide to you. None of that matters. If none of anything you just read chimes, you can and will still derive huge enjoyment from this game.

This VR experience matches accessibility with challenge. There's an "easy to pick up hard to master" vibe. Such challenge may not be for everyone in the long-term, but it has me hooked here and now.

Graphics are good. The scenery whizzes by to give that sensation of speed. The textures are high quality, and timing performance at 120fps on Valve Index is solid on Ampere. If you have the performance headroom there's a windowed mode especially for demos, live streamers and youtube recording.

Sound design is great. Music is great. None of it has been muted on Twitch so far in my experience. And it can be turned off in-game, if you want your own tunes to accompany you.

The feeling of street skating has been captured very well. Surprising then to learn that it only uses your hands, and wee bit of head tracking, to perform tricks otherwise unreachable to most of us in IRL. I was skater in my time, and loved it. The developer team has tried, tested and ruled out many other options for controls to get to where it is now, and it works.

The environment doesn't give up its secrets easily. You can be creative. Looking for unusual lines, just because. It feels like real skating. You can practice again, and again. And when you're ready, go for new records.

The study of IRL skating by the devs is evident, the hand motions required to make the board jump, spin and flip are as your feet would be required to move. I played on Vive controllers for each session (heed the warning on the store page about incompatible Windows Mixed Reality, HP Reverb G2 and VIVE Cosmos Controllers) . The mappings are great. It all flows so well to perform complex combos, once you get your head wrapped around where your thumbs and arms should move to.

The tutorial is excellent at walking through the moves. And gives you some fun boxes, rails, and small ramps (no half-pipes or quarter pipes in the game). There is much to commend the learning process that underpins the tutorials. I still go back to them even now. Even just to muck around in the warehouse.

One of the negatives that might be perceived early on, is that you cannot free roam. The decision was taken to offer either a linear path (in a recorded run), or the ability to "hop" backwards to checkpoints in a practice run. Either way there is a linear feel to the level. That's not bad thing. I spent days skating at the same spots IRL in my home town. It brings back that feeling of sessioning a particular gap, rail, stairs, slab, wall or whatever part of the street you had until you got what you wanted from it (or janitor/security moved you on).

If you like skating, VR and/or skill based VR games, then this is the one to pick up. It's kept me going for 28 hours, and it will easily keep me going for a lot more on top of that. You fall off. You get back up again, quickly. No messing about. Adjust your posture, mentally rehearse the trick, eye up your path.... breath... relax and go again. You'll get it this time. Just. One. More. Run.

The game is still in early access. The developers have a clear idea of what to add. Including leader boards. Meanwhile, know that my best combo is a bit over 60k at time of writing. As a pro VR Skater said to me, manuals and nose manuals are the key! I'm sure it'll not be long until you beat it.

I hope the community will be generous in sharing footage from their runs. Just like the old days, when the stars of VR Skater rise, and VHS videos are delivered taped to the latest skate magazine... it will inspire others to follow, to learn, and to improve. But never be discouraged. As long as your next run is better than your last, you're doing it right!

[[Edit: Got my second (pure rogue) to 20. With the "back from the dead patch" in July 2023, I'm starting the third run - a pure Vanguard build. Note, turn the in-game supersampling up in the menu from default with the new patch]]

[[Edit: Got to level 20. Had a blast. Arm is tired. This game offers hardcore VR fans fluid and super fast movement. You don't have to play it that way, but why would you not? Amazing. Looking forward to the next patch.]]

Loved it. Visually fantastic, audio is almost always on point, and the game play goes at a fair pace. Combat is fluid and fast. Frames are solid on my top-end PC. Add in the proc gen levels, the random loot, and the levels, and this game will keep me coming back for more. Definitely 13 quid well spent.