EA Sports presents Skate, another edition taken from the critically acclaimed Tony Hawk series. In all honesty I have no knowledge of skateboarding making words like ollies and kickflips sound like imported words from another planet.

However the game is one in a long line of vastly improving releases by EA, with many new features including the Flickit control, allowing you to literally skate how you want, giving the impression of being on a real board. The Flickit controls remove the need to touch the face buttons to perform skating moves.

Following the commands in the trick menu won't guarantee you will witness the cooler moments in skate. This is a fairly open system, so to do whacky stunts really requires a good imagination, finding the right location, nailing your timing, and finding the will to try the same thing again and again. Want your board to roll under a rail while you leap over and then land back on cleanly? There's no button press for this, no unlockable command to create an animation chain. You just have to find a spot for the attempt, figure out a good flip trick that gives you some separation from the board, and enjoy the 25 bails you must endure before finally finding success.

The controls work surprisingly well for a brand new franchise, but there are a few issues to deal with. While the game is centred around realism many a time I have been in a situation where a hard collision with the ground seemed on the cards, however to my amazement I landed upright and was saved humiliation. Therefore for every hour of skating you will likely come up against one or two oddities that ruin the flow of the game and make you realise you are in fact, just playing a game.

Overall Skate maintains the high level of standard that past Tony Hawk games have achieved. EA Sports continue to churn out top quality reliable material and any game produced by them should be taken in consideration, due to the fact they are masters of their profession.

This game was supplied by Jodie Van Hibb at EA Sports.
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James Henderson