Tony Hawk's American Sk8land (DS)

CNET editors' rating: 4.0 stars Excellent
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Product summary

Gamespot editors' review

• Reviewed by: Jeff Gerstmann
• Reviewed on: 11/16/2005
• Released on: 11/16/2005

The Tony Hawk series has come to portable systems before, but usually the game has been transferred out of its behind-the-back perspective into a more portable-friendly isometric view. Tony Hawk's American Sk8land for the DS is a new, mostly original game that captures almost all of the gameplay found in this year's console version, Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. Most of its level design comes from that version as well, but its novel look, its online play, solid gameplay, and its revamped goals make this a great one for the Nintendo DS.

The touch screen lets you do easy specials, plus it doubles as a map.

The change from Wasteland to Sk8land appears to be mainly focused on toning it down to make the game easier to swallow for a younger audience. Wasteland's storyline had an edge that's lacking here. You aren't referenced as a runaway, and though you still meet up with Mindy, she's just a friendly local comic book artist looking for her big break. You meet up with Tony Hawk almost immediately, who's impressed with your skills, and the three of you set out to build a wicked skatepark by collecting cash and completing goals.

While the game is largely focused on throwing goals at you, there's something to be said for just skating around and doing tricks. The Tony Hawk trick system has evolved quite a bit over the years, and this installment contains most of the moves that have made the series so popular. You'll notice some omissions--the ability to get off of your board is gone, for example, but since none of the goals require you to get off your board, you probably won't miss it. It's almost like the game has taken the good, refined points of the series' classic gameplay while leaving behind the more recent inclusions that haven't worked so well. In addition, the levels are large and contain plenty of interesting surfaces to use in your combos.

The story mode lets you skate around the levels in search of pedestrians that will give you tasks to complete. For the most part, the tasks are rather simple. Someone will ask you to perform a trick using a certain ramp, and you'll have to achieve fairly low combo scores, and so on. You're often lined right up with your goals when you're required to do specific tricks, which makes completing them a one- or two-button task. If you've been playing Tony Hawk games all along, you won't find too much challenge in the story mode, but it's still interesting enough to be worth playing. If you're new to the series, a "kid" mode lets you lighten things up a bit.

Like the more recent Tony Hawk console games, Sk8land also has a classic mode, which returns to its pro skater roots by giving you a list of 10 goals and a two-minute timer. You need to complete goals within that two-minute limit, but you can retry as many times as you like without having to redo any goals you've previously completed. This mode is significantly more challenging than the story mode, since you'll have to do a little more than just execute a basic trick or two to succeed. By the end of the game, you'll need to score 2,000,000 points in those two minutes for one of the score goals. This is not impossible to achieve, but it's much tougher than anything you'll find in the story mode. Therefore, it's worth it to go back through the levels a second time for this additional challenge.

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• 4.5 stars

  "its an awsome game"

  by Black_hole on May 1, 2006

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