Look, we’ve been through a lot here. We started out on this journey lo those many weeks ago, but we’ve finally come to the end of our ENHANCE journey through the adventures chronicled by the intrepid Helix Snake. If you’ve somehow come late to the party (and I don’t know whether to pity you or envy you), you can find the first part of our breakdown by clicking here. You can find part two by clicking here. And you can access the penultimate chapter by clicking here.
Enhance: Helix Snake’s top 50 favorite ‘Skate 3’ clips, Part 4
It’s finally over. We finally did it.
Bill Hanstock is a writer, author and Emmy Award-winning producer. He began writing for SB Nation in 2011.
But this is it: the ENHANCE di tutti enhance-o. At least as far as Skate 3 glitches go. We’ll return next week with an all-new (and thankfully stand-alone) ENHANCE that will dive down into another tidbit of sports minutiae. But for now, to refresh your memory, here is the video we’ve been unpacking. We’ll be starting at right around the seven-minute mark.
If you like, you can play this in the background while you read the words and look at the GIFs. You’ve earned it.
7:09: Way to go, buddy. You did it.
And yet kids on “Double Dare” couldn’t get an orange flag out of a giant nose.
7:14: Is “MEGARAMP” a thing? Like, a registered trademark? Or is it just a random decal included in the game, like the stock “tattoos” you can put on a Create-A-Wrestler?
I’m assuming this isn’t an attempt to recreate an actual place where skateboarders can go to die horrific deaths. If MEGARAMP is just some generic term created for Skate 3, I think we’ve stumbled upon the next SyFy movie. MEGARAMP vs. SHARKASAURUS. RHINARK meets MEGARAMP. (Rhinark is part rhino, part shark. You’re welcome, SyFy. I’ll take my $100,000 in the form of a cashier’s check.) ($100,000 because industry standard is 10% of the budget for the script of a film.) (Massive diss to SyFy.)
7:29: “It feels like you’re running at an incredible rate, Harry!”
This is the next evolution in parkour. Yes, I mean “suicide.”
7:44: I’m not entirely sure where these next few glitches begin and end, so I’ll just go ahead and share a couple of GIFs with you.
This sequence of people getting bashed by disappearing, reappearing and malfunctioning items leads me to believe that the scoring system in Skate 3 is entirely based on bashing yourself or your contemporaries with Dumpsters flung by makeshift trebuchet. Find a dumpster that can be launched in the air. Launch it! Did you cream your friend with it? You win!
Pfffft, listen to me. A “scoring system” for a video game. Hey, go back to your typewriter, grandpa! Am I right? Video games don’t have “scores” anymore. It’s just “play the video game until credits signify that the video game is over.” Along the way, your system will tell you that you’ve earned achievements. If there is a “CREAMED BY DUMPSTER” achievement, I will consider purchasing Skate 3. Otherwise, I’m not yet sold.
8:08: Nice cans.
8:23: I take it all back. This might be the best video game ever made.
8:50: This might actually be the single greatest moment in the video, because something amazingly badass happens and then we get a cinematic “DEAL WITH IT” close-up.
As a whole, the glitches leading up to that look make it a perfect pay-off. And of course, it all ends in tragedy. Hell of a note to go out on.
What’s that? We’re not done? Oh. Well then.
9:10: This is a literal death. This man has literally died.
I guess when you die in the game, you get x-ray vision? So you can see how badly you died? That’s ... that’s an interesting choice for a skateboarding game. Sort of like a “hey nerd, aren’t you glad you don’t actually skateboard? Look how terrifying it is!” Nice scare tactics, video game. Keep ‘em indoors.
9:22: This is actually what biblical purgatory is. Look it up.
Read your bibles, people.
9:25: Take THAT, Glenn Beck!
9:40: Eventually, every horror movie will be this:
Hollywood will get tired of their Insidiouses (Insidiii?) and their small girls with backwards heads and spider legs scampering on walls and it will all eventually be small objects slightly moving in a herky-jerky fashion in an industrial warehouse. And Scary Movie XXI will be a Kim Kardashian impersonator slightly moving in an industrial warehouse. So look forward to that.
9:47: The popularity of soccer is exploding in America.
(This is what most Americans think soccer actually is.)
10:11: Okay, THIS is the perfect ending.
In the end, it was all in the service of someone crotching themselves. Well played. Thank you, Helix Snake, for teaching us how to laugh about a guy getting hit in the nuts all over again.
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