Create and Skate

Shaping up as one of the most anticipated DS games, Tony Hawk’s American SK8Land seems to offer everything you could want in terms of either DS or Tony Hawk’s-ness. Most straightforward are the skating elements, which in the single player career mode sees you tricking your way through seven areas of Los Angeles to restore the American SK8Land skate park to its former glory. Mirroring this urban beat are the graphics which have a cell-shaded feel, with black outlines and blocked-out chunks of colour.

But there’s much more on offer. First up is the map on the DS touchscreen. This display information such as the location of collectible items, hints and tips. There’s also plenty of touchscreen goodies including the trick slots. These are moves triggered during the game when your special meter is full. These tricks can be executed when one of the slots is touched with the stylus and players can customise their trick slots by assigning tricks from a list available via the skate shop.

There are two other main uses for the touchscreen. One is the Tantrum mini-games. Playing these lets you recover lost combos when you bail or fall off. Three pulsing columns are triggered, and you have to touch them at the top of the columns with the stylus to reclaim your combos and win a speed boost. More creatively you can also design your own skatepark by earning money through the story mode, buying the equipment you want for the park and then selecting from over 1000 different designs through the touchscreen create-a-park editor. You can customise your deck and add graffiti to the world too using the touchscreen and the colour palette provided.

Plenty more DS trickery comes thanks from wi-fi connectivity. Obviously there’s multiplayer for head-to-head skating, allowing you to battle through modes such as Trick Attack, Score Challenge, Combo Mambo and The Price is Wrong.

Activision will also be supporting what it calls the WiFi Hawk community. As well as skating head-to-head, this will let you do things such as posting high scores and statistics to a central server. You’ll also be able to download ghost skaters which will teach you new runs, tricks and combos. You can play against the ghosts, which are recorded versions of other gamers playing and then uploaded to the central server; graphically they’re white figures, which is why they are known as ghosts.

And filling out the game features is the in-game voice recording option. This means you can record sound effects and noises while playing the game. These will then be repeated when you bail, perform a special trick, or clear a gap.

Which all together must make Tony Hawk’s American SK8Land one of the most impressive DS games ever developed. Let’s just hope it actually plays well when it’s released sometime over the next couple of months.