Tony Hawk's American Sk8land

"This must totally suck, becuase all portable skateboarding games suck, right? Wrong."

When you first saw this game on the DS, you must have been thinking what I was thinking. OMG, a Skate game on a portable! It must suck. Not enough buttons and stuff. And look at Tony Hawk's previous portable game history! Abysmal. But when I got it, I was surprised at its goodness.

There isn't much plot in this game. From what I can tell, it's supposed to be like American Wasteland, same people and same names of levels, even though they're pretty different. I'm not going to include a story section because of the lack of need.

Gameplay: 9/10
Like I said before, I thought this would be crappy. I thought there would be go, stop, jump, and spin. But then I started playing. Wow, it plays just like the console version! You can do all the same stuff, like Ollies and Grab and Flip tricks. And if you're used to the console version, have no fear, because the button layout is similar because there are four buttons in the same shape as the console ones (Well, PS2 and Xbox). The top button is grind, the button is jump, you know, the same as Pro Skater or Underground. There are only problems that are noticeable. 1: It's really hard to do a manual out of a jump. In the Console version you can just press the manual buttons, but you can't just do that in this version, I can't figure out how. It says it should be the same... Also, when you're doing balance tricks, like Manuals or Grinding, it's pretty much impossible to lose your balance. It's too easy. That's actually a bad thing. But besides that, it's really great.

Graphics: 7/10
Like I say in all my Tony Hawk reviews, Graphics isn't what the series is about, but they are nice to have. This game seems kind of cel shaded. When you're talking to someone, they appear kind of blocky with no face. On the top screen, anyway, on the bottom they show a little sketched face.

But the playing areas are great; you can tell what's going on and everything. The only big problem is that the camera's a little too close to the skater for my liking.

Music: 8/10
Another thing that surprised me about this game is that it has real music. I thought it would have that standard Video Game techno stuff. But no, it has real mainstream music, and it's some stuff from American Wasteland, like Green Day and Saves The Day. Obviously since it's only a little DS cartridge, it can't hold all those songs that the Console ones have, but it has 10 or 11 choice songs from American Wasteland. At least they cut out My Chemical Romance... thank God for that....

So, overall, I'd say if you're a Tony Hawk fan and you have a DS, I'd recommend this.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/02/06