Well, those cops can't tell you to leave if you're skating in your own skateboarding park, which is one thing you can build in Street Sk8er 2, released this month by Electronic Arts for PlayStation. Whatever course you design can be saved on a memory card for future competitions with up to four players. But if you start to miss those run-ins with the cops, Street Sk8er 2 also features a mode of play where players must evade pursuing police cruisers while trying to rack up as many trick points as possible on the streets of San Francisco.
Points are awarded based on the frequency and difficulty of the tricks a skater pulls off.
The graphics are good, but cartoonish. That's OK, realism is not intended in this game. The cities are very intricate playgrounds for skaters, where just about everything on the screen can be used to perform a trick. Players can grind down the curbs of San Francisco's famously curved Lombard Street, jump over taxis in London, jump off cannons in Moscow's Red Square or do tricks in the empty swimming pools of Miami hotels. Street Sk8er 2 features 10 fictional skateboarding characters, any of whom can be customized to alter their speed, size, style or maneuverability.