Skate 1 still looks good. The Color palate was so spot on. Felt natural but kinda nostalgic.
Yeah I loved the aesthetic and color palette. And the saturation gets cranked when you're landing a bunch of tricks in a row. The music would get louder too. Lots of tasteful subtleties like that.
I also love that the OST was done by an ex-skater. Why am I forgetting who right now... oh I think it's Tommy Guerrero?
And each neighborhood has it's own subtle filter color. If I recall, downtown is blue/light blue. Old parts of town are brown/tan. Suburbs are maybe green/sun yellow-orange?
It had such stylish UI too which is rare in games.
That game had an awesome mix of realism and stylization. It was mostly real in ways that were true to skateboarding too.
Skate 2 was so ugly in comparison. It was desaturated and lacked style. Just kind of ugly brown desaturated "realism". I hated how every game from that era fell into the "brown = realism" trend.
You can tell there was so much love and care and pride put into the development of that first game that was not allowed in the second game (and for the most part the third game).
I feel like those early 360 games before the 2008 crash was the last time major publishers were allowing for some risk and artistry in their games like that.