Skate It

We weren’t impressed with this on Wii, largely because of its borked controls – all crazy waggles and impenetrable balance board wobbles. The DS version has the FlickIt system, which involves swiping the stylus on a touchscreen skateboard to perform moves – and it works. Memorizing the maneuvers can take a while, and scrawling on the screen while steering with the D-pad and doing grabs with the shoulder buttons requires plenty of dexterity, but it feels like you’re skating.

There are loads to do – challenges, designing parks, multiplayer modes, free skating – so you can scoot around for ages. There are some graphical hitches: sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between a wall and a ramp, causing your skater to hit the ground with a convincing thud – although a few times he just got caught in the scenery. And you will need plenty of patience to get used to the FlickIt thing. But stick with it and this is an enjoyable skating game with loads to do with no danger of getting bored.

Dec 11, 2008