The more fun quests, I found, were those that gave you a list of tricks to perform in certain places, or even the simpler ones that tasked you with getting a high score within a certain area, inciting you to try out crazy combos using one set of ramps. The novelty of actually performing each quest becomes diluted quickly, though, once you realise most of them are variations on 'collect 6 thingies' or 'touch these points'. I know that style of writing will grate for some, but I have yet to tire of rare animals being adorable buffoons. It's all tied together with a story about helping your human, known to all as 'Big Friend', and there's some fun dialogue to push you along, encompassing the classic 'animal as moronic but loyal friend' memery of the internet age, complete with grammatical idiocy. There are 5 levels (that I can see so far) and you've got to complete all the quests on each level to unlock new skate parks. How do you animate chubby birds on a skateboard? The answer is you animate the board, and simply let the birds flap in a panic.ДЄll in all, there's nothing too complicated about any of it. You'll need that to reach certain heights more easily, or skate up larger verts. Do enough neat tricks and you'll fill a bar that says 'FANCY', giving you more speed. This combo system includes a little counter in the corner, pressuring you to keep up the pace. More importantly, a screm counts as a trick, so the game actually encourages you to squawk like crazy between ramps and rails to keep your combo going. I know that style of writing will grate for some, but I have yet to tire of rare animals being adorable buffoons.' It works even when you have fallen off your board, turning the game into a sort of avian tantrum simulator. It makes your bird squeak and flap its wings. Please understand, this is not a spelling error. Other quests might ask you to collect the letters for the word L E G S, or 'screm at the floor ten times'. They'll ask you to noseplant on quarter pipes to clean up soda cups, or roll around attaching balloons to a blanket to open up a new area. Your fellow birds are scattered around each level. Just press a button to get back up, or you can slap down a 'reset' point anywhere, then warp back there with a button touch. You are tiny after all, and skating amid the pizza boxes or grinding the cereal bowls of your unseen human companion can result in a nasty fall. It gets you some extra air, nothing too outrageous, but it comes in handy if you need to leap over a discarded sock. This is basically a double-jump, a little flap-flap after you've already hopped. There are flips, grabs, plants, grinds, mid-air ollies. On an Xbox controller (you should use one) you hold down A and release to perform an ollie, then tap other buttons and the left thumbstick to perform a trick. With that tone firmly established, you get to doing ollies and flip tricks in a somewhat recognisable way. Even a trailer announcing the game's delayed release date couldn't help itself. Instead, this is about being a pigeon on a piece of plywood, collecting letters to the word M O N E Y because an investment banker cockatoo said it's important. We have Session and Skater XL for our kickflip realism.

There are a bunch of canaries, eagles, gulls and budgies who give you missions and tasks to perform, and they are not serious birds. Still, it's hard to hate on these feathery ones when they squawk so pure, and when their taste in music is im-peck-able.Дidn't like that bird joke? Well, maybe this game isn't for you. There's plenty of wobbly physics on show here, much of it intentional and jokey (as you'd expect from a game that seems to have resulted entirely from a single pun). But don't expect the truly smooth flow of the Hawkster's outings. It's the arcadey kind of kickflipper, handling more like THUG than a Skate game.

Skatebird is simultaneously a homage to the Tony Hawk games of old and a celebration of just how stupid birds can be. A sometimes wonky skating game that makes up for its jank with birbish moxie.

When does skatebird come out