Tony Hawk's American Sk8land

"My only fault is I didnt get it sooner"

The DS has been pumping out great titles in the past year. After a slow start, it's finally shaping up to be an awesome handheld system. One game that I looked past while looking for great titles was Tony Hawk American Sk8land. It was by chance that I found it extremely cheap one day, and decided to buy it on an impulse. I was expecting mildly tuned graphics, sloppy controls, and generic music, what I got was probably one of my favorite handheld titles of all time.

American Sk8land takes you in the shoes of, well, you. You're a fresh new skater getting in Tony Hawks new skating competition to prove your worth, and make a name for yourself. You get to create what your character looks like, although the selection was small and kind of disappointed me, it was good since you got to control some of what your character is like. While coming into town, Tony is swarmed by fans, and you run into Mindy, a local girl who has a great artistic talent, and wants you to show her what you can do.

After a while, you and Mindy and Tony find an old Skate Park, American Sk8land. With the help of Tony, Mindy, and tons of other famous skating legends which include Bam Margera, Rodney Mullen, Mike V, and the list goes on. You will travel all across California in hopes to rally more skaters and more money to bring back American Sk8land to what it used to be. It isn't that long of a game really, but the story is decent, and the stars in it are amazing. Plus there is Classic mode and lots of other modes to play, if you don't like the story.

Where American Sk8land impressed me the most though was the simple and yet graceful way it used the controls. While remembering the exact buttons to press to do a trick is difficult, at least for me it was, the number of combos and the number of tricks to do in the game were gigantic and impressed me. Grinding was simple and easy, flips and mid air tricks worked to perfection, and incredibly realistic in this game. Your anger meter could be controlled on the touch screen, the higher on the scale you got the three bars the better the freak out. They also utilized the touch screen by letting you perform special tricks in midair, or while grinding, and enter in a Matrix like slow motion to perform better tricks. Plus using the DS's microphone, you can record yourself and the noises you make when landing a trick or when you fall, although you only get about 2 seconds to make the sound you want.

Being able to customize your character was also a big part of what made this game great. Not just by the way you look, but also your board, your stickers, and even the way you rebuild American Sk8land is up to you. I loved the way it gave you your own freedom in doing things your way, while still controlling what you do and having it flow perfectly, its one of the few games on the DS to let you do that, another being Animal Crossing, although this games freedom doesn't hold anything to that.

But something that American Sk8land had, which was one of its greatest and most spectacular parts of the game, was an outstanding soundtrack. Featuring artist like Green day and Saves the Day, which while I'm not a huge pop rock fan, I do enjoy those artist, and having them in my game was all the more better, it's a game I never had to mute while playing. Voice acting was great, adding the voices of big named skaters and legends of the game. All the sounds in Sk8land were impressive, even more so with the recording feature I mentioned above, and I was very impressed with it seeing as how it's a title I thought would be mediocre at best.

Graphically, this game isn't like past Tony Hawk games, instead they went with a cell shaded, cartoonish look throughout the game. There are both pros and cons with this. It fit in extremely well with the whole comic book type cut scenes, and throughout the game, environments had a unique, and very wonderfully detailed look to them. Character models looked though, and the realism in them was kind of a disappointment. While yes everything in the game looked better than decent, the character models all around seemed lacking and just blocky and not detailed at all.

I do like the cell shaded look though, and thought it was a definite good move for their handheld Tony Hawk games. Cut scenes looked fantastic, and I loved the way they opened every single one of them up and had the comic book feeling for them all, the graphics, besides character models truly were superb, and I like to keep putting emphasis on it.

I have found probably one of my favorite titles for the DS and handhelds in general, while playing American Sk8land. The graphics are fun and interesting, although character models lack, the game play is outstanding and easy to perform tricks, although the touch screen's used seemed slapped on, and the music and voice acting were impressive and certainly made the game a lot better. I would recommend this game to anyone, even if you're not a fan of the series. While story mode is short, classic mode could last you forever, although the area size of the levels are not as large as on consoles. This is defiantly a game to get if you're looking for cheap and fun DS titles.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 06/13/06