Squaring up to Tony Hawk in a battle for boarding supremacy, the new kid on the block isn’t exactly flipping the bird at the old master, it’s more of a fawning, “You’re great, Tony, I want to be just like you when I grow up” act of hero worship. Yep, EA may be bigging up SKATE as a “Tony Hawk killer” but the reality is this game couldn’t be closer to the skating daddy if it called itself Little Tone and hid inside his pants.

Fully-reactive city, real-life skaters, slow-mo stunts, racking up combos and points, loads of hidden bonuses and stuff to unlock - Tony’s been there, done that and spilled blood all over the T-shirt. But if the gameplay mechanics are extremely familiar it’s in the details that EA reckons SKATE will guff all over the old man. “Innovative controls,” “physics-driven animation” and “intelligent cameras,” are the startlingly original claims EA is making for the game - but to be fair, the shots and videos we’ve been shown so far do indicate that SKATE will at the very least look the business. It’s far too early to call right now, but whatever happens, at least SKATE is hoping to give Tony Hawk’s series some much-needed competition.

SKATE certainly looks good and ticks the “fully-interactive 3D city” box but it seems like instead of breaking new ground, SKATE could be a carbon copy of the Hawk games. We'll see…