Skate 2 takes place in the city of New San Vanelona, or New San Van, or San Van, or just S.V. It's a much bigger place that you might think at first. You can just head in one direction and watch how the scenery changes. Or better yet, teleport to the top of the Cougar Mountain and enjoy the ride downhill into a wide residential area. Bear to the right if you want to go through the sleek downtown area, or bear left if you want to go through the historical old town. Either way, you'll eventually find yourself on the waterfront. You can make this trip several times before you find yourself going through the same places.

The city is peppered with challenges of various types. If there are any brick walls in Skate 2, they're going to be a long time in coming.

After the jump, I figure I'll try some of the races.

The races are like a bad racing game inserted into a skateboarding game. They're mostly dumb luck, but they're a change of pace from the skill-based stunt challenges. I think of them as palate cleansers rather than main courses. Skateboards aren't very good at quickly changing direction without losing a lot of speed. There's no camera control, so the occasional hard turn is a leap of faith. One of the biggest problems is that the default camera angle is down low, so your skater looms large in the camera, making it hard to see what's ahead. Setting the camera angle to high from the options menu removes much of the butt from your view.

I'm not sure what - if anything - I can do to go faster beyond simply pushing with my foot from time to time. Should I lean forward? Can I lean forward? Should I, uh, pump some trannies? Should I do the cool thing where I actually lay on my back on the board and ride it down the street like a toboggan? Skate 2 doesn't really tell me these things, but that's okay. Because as I keep trying, eventually the other guys are going to wipe out enough times that I can take the lead because I've wiped out fewer times.

There are also some cool follow-the-leader challenges where you have to stay within 150 feet of another rider. Like Skate 2 in general, the other rider has a route and a destination, but he's not scripted. He'll fail a trick and bail (ha ha!). Or maybe a car will hit him (ha ha!). I imagine these will eventually get really frustrating as the lead skater goes through difficult areas that trip me up, but the first few of these are simple. I figure they're the gimmes.

The races are also a good way to be led through the city. As you're racing - or just exploring - you'll find skate-able edifices or jumps that are then pinned onto the map. Your task is to "own" (pwn?) these edifices by doing something on them to earn a high enough score. I tend to be able to "own" something after about five to ten tries. I'm not very good, you see.

But then you get to "kill" it. This requires some prohibitively high score that's probably going to involve chaining together a couple of tricks, probably through manuals, which is the fancy skater term for popping a wheelie and riding on the back wheels. I've never been able to use manuals to link tricks in even my most-played Tony Hawk games. It takes some serious fingerwork required to do a trick, then land the trick, then manual (Easy there! Manualing will not brook any ham-handedness!), then do a second trick, then land the second trick. That's about where I usually plateau.

But I'm not worried about it, since there's plenty to do before I have to "kill" locations. In fact, all these challenges -- the racing, the ownage, the contests, the photo ops -- are side shows once I discover the Annals of Meat. Why hasn't a skateboarding game done an Annal of Meat before?

Up next: bring on the pain!
(Click here for the previous Skate 2 game diary.)