With Tony Hawks being the unrivalled king of skateboard games, its time for EA to try their hand and show Mr Hawks how to do things.

The game starts off rather amusingly as your character gets involved in a very serious but funny accident. Your job is then to build back all of the skills lost in a series of tasks set by the local skaters, shops and magazines. 

San Vanelona is a huge skating mecca, it consists of shopping plaza’s, skateparks, school yards and long, fast roads. Throughout San Vanelona are fellow skaters who are going about the streets doing their thing, follow them and you may find some cool new areas. Some of the skaters will offer you a challenge, these consist of Follow Me, where you need to stay within a certain distance of the leader; SKATE, where you pull off a move and the next player has to copy it, make a mistake and you gain a letter, spell SKATE and its game over. Deathrace is where you and a few other skaters head down a large hill, weaving in-between traffic and padestrians, trying to get to the next checkpoint, and ultimately the finish line.

As well as skater challenges you will also be invited to local events like Own the Spot where you have to perform a high scoring move that knowone else can beat, Best Trick, Pro Challenges and also Film and Photo challenges, where your camera man tells you what they want and its up to you to choose a location and start filming.

The main progression in the game is made through the magazines. There are two mags in San Vanelona, The Skateboard Mag and Thrasher. Your goal is to get onto the front cover of each of these mags, and once you have done that you will be swamped by potential sponsorship deals. The more sponsors you get, the more clothing and boards you can afford.

For those of us used to Tony Hawks games, the controls will come as a bit of a shock. The Left stick is used to control your skaters body and the Right stick to control the board. To pull an ollie you need to pull back on the Right stick, then push forward, the longer you hold down, the higher the jump. To pull off a manual, you need to find the biting point of the Right stick, pull down just slightly on the stick and your skater will lean back on the board, lifting the front wheels from the floor. Once you have gotten used to the controls, the moves you can pull off have a greater sense of realism and feeling of satisfaction than on Tony Hawks.  

The graphics and sound on this game are great, going for  realistic looks and noises for the city streets, plus as expected, a very impressive soundtrack.

There are a few niggling problems with this game that takes away from the great polish, the camera is far too low, causing your skater to block the view ahead and if you take a sharp turn, it takes far too long to get back behind you, and when on some of the tougher challenges, this can get very frustrating. Also is the lack of self righting, more often than not you will find your worst enemy is not another character or some crazy move to pull off, but a simple curb. Hit one of these and you will go flying, but when you get back on your board you tend to face the curb again, with no room to gain speed for an ollie, so you have to unceremoniously turn your board around and gain another run up. Now dont get me wrong, I love the ultra realism of such things, but it does take away from the fun gaming element.