Skate It - Hands on with Wii and DS

Don't get us wrong, it's an impressive enough achievement for Black Box to get a 3D version of Skate running on DS hardware. And running pretty well, too - it's all recognisably Skate-style, with the same colour palette and environmental design. The controls, however, leave a lot to be desired after Wii's nifty flicks.

Using the stylus, you draw the trick you want over an image of a skateboard. For a flip, say, you draw a line from the tail to the far right or left of the nose, for a nollie pop shuv you draw a semi circle out from the nose to the tail. Again, it's a simple system in theory that's difficult to get used to in practice. But, unlike Wii, the DS controls never felt much fun to us.

Steering with the D-pad is a bit awkward, and pushing is really hit or miss - you're supposed to draw a straight line in the space alongside the board from front to back to trigger a push, but sometimes you'll trigger an accidental trick, and sometimes the push will be little more than a gentle foot tap. It's frustrating, and never started to feel natural. Performing the right trick at the right time wastoo fiddly to be satisfying - and meant we couldn't concentrate on setting up a runor steering around the environment.

That said, both versions still have plenty of time to be perfected. Black Box won't launch until the games are done - which you can expect will be later this year - and this is a developer that has a knack for creating intuitive and intelligent control systems. Expect both the DS and Wii versions of Skate It to match the high enjoyment factor of the next-gen original Skate.