Better than the previous game, but there is still improvement to be made.
All you want to do, is participate into events. A good point is that you can go directly through your map to the event you want, so you do not have to cruise in all the map to look for them. You select and you compete. That's it. However, there are some spots to find, as it was the case in the previous game. You need to "own" the spots in the city. You can also create some and send them to your friends. That can be nice if you still want to play the game after that you are done with the career mode.
There is also a Hall of Meat mode that was improved over Skate 1. You have 4 categories in it: Points, Body Damage, Style and Grab Bag. The first one consists in doing the most Points in your bail. The second one consists in breaking specific bones. In Style, you need to bail with Style and at a specific speed or over a specific distance. Grab Bag is usually based on hitting objects, pedestrians or cars. Each category contains 15 events.
There are quite a lot of real skaters who are in this game, including Chris Cole, Danny Way, Dennis Busenitz, Eric Koston, etc...
A nice new things that was also added is the possibility of moving the objects all over the place. You can create your own spots to skate or bail on.
Graphics sure look dated, but it is not a major con. The camera is set very low, so you do not see in front of your character. I would really prefer a highest camera set a little bit farther from your skater. Also, pedestrians can be so annoying when they decide to be in your way. Some events are difficult to succeed only because of that.
The music is OK, but I will strongly recommend you to play your own music from your hard drive or PC since after a while, you get tired of the original music. Another reason why you should play yours is that the characters always repeat the same text over and over. Since skateboard is based on trial and error, you will repeat the same event over and over with your buddies always repeating their 3 lines of text.
It also lacks of events against other skaters. Most of the time, you are alone and need to make a film, a specific trick, etc... I would appreciate to have more jam sessions. As it was also the case in the original Skate, doing a specific trick can be very frustrating due to the controls. The flip is done with the right thumbstick, which is not always accurate.
Multiplayer is usually really competitive, so be sure to have practiced a lot before getting online. I tried several times to play, however it seems that it lacks people, so the events will not start even if we were 6. That could have been nice if we could have played even if we were only 2 or 3.
Overall, that's not a bad game. If you are a fan of skateboarding, for sure you need to play this game. If not, you can probably go over it.