Tony Hawks American Sk8land (DS)

Quick Overview

Much has been made of Activision and Neversoft's recent release of Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. You've doubtless experienced the marketing campaign on the goggle box yourselves, and are well aware of the game's unique selling point: a large, seamless world to explore, skate through and grind on, and not a loading screen in sight. Such technology, achieved by streaming textures from the disc, is hardly anything new, but it's still true that the Tony Hawk series has come a long way since the early PlayStation days. For many fans, perhaps too long a way, with missions and collecting things sometimes more the focus than going for that enormous, record-breaking trick combo. It's just as well then, that some machines are around with similar capabilities to the original PlayStation. We refer, of course, to the wonderfully versatile Nintendo DS. Vicarious Visions, a developer, has long been involved with publisher Activision, often responsible for conversions to handheld of Tony Hawk games by developers Neversoft. But they've really gone to town with the new Tony hawk game, the first of its kind to appear on the Nintendo DS. Gone is the isometric mockery of the grown up version that has graced the screen of the GBA for the past few years. Vicarious Visions have judged the DS worthy of holding its own in the skateboard game arena. The first thing you'll notice is true 3D graphics. They look great, and the cell-shaded style that's been adopted to save on processing power still gives the game a great look, while also allowing it to run at the holy grail speed of 60 frames per second. Fans of THPS 1-4 will appreciate the game's structure, with achieving high scores and collecting letters the order of the day, against the backdrop of an amusing comic strip style storyline. Neither are the manifold Wi-Fi abilities of the DS ignored. There's full online play (this is the first DS game after Mario Kart to take advantage of the feature) and some nice ideas besides. You can use the built in DS microphone to record a noise that will play every time you bust a particularly sick trick, and you can use the stylus to create your very own tag to use in the Graffiti mode. The DS has so many attractive features that developers can't help taking advantage. Vicarious Visions have just joined that list.