skate.

Skate. is a skateboarding video game, where you design your own character, and enter a big city, where you can skate wherever you want, provided that you unlocked the locations in Career Mode first.

The Flickit control scheme is a good idea that actually makes the game feel more realistic but its not executed perfectly. Examples are when you try to do a kickflip but end up doing either an Ollie or a Pop Shoveit instead. The hard fliptrick moves are exactly what it says on the tin, hard to do. You have to move the right analog stick in the correct way to do the move, and with such a large amount of moves to do with just one stick, it gets really hard.

At least its not ridiculously unrealistic like the Tony Hawk games can be (doing million trick combos using grinds, manuals, flip tricks, grab tricks and reverts.)

The graphics are quite good, the city where you're skating in looks very realistic at times, where quarter pipes are actually in a realistic place like a skatepark, unlike the game's competitor, the Tony Hawk franchise, where they slam in quarter pipes unrealistically around a level, so they'd be all over the buildings. There are also no separate levels in Career Mode, and its all just one huge map.

The story line itself is quite good, it focuses on you doing challenges such as photo shoots, pro challenges, competitions etc to earn sponsorship deals and become a pro.

And then theres the more in your face advertising. Upon meeting a pro skater, you will notice a cutscene showing off their gear and what brand it is. This isn't that bad because many of the brands are related to skateboarding and are actually sponsors ingame.

In this game, prepare to fall over A LOT. Many of the challenges in the game aren't easy the first time, or many of the other times either. You will see yourself be chucked around like a ragdoll a lot.  This can be a little bit annoying at times, but I guess practice makes perfect.

Multiplayer (local or online) has a variety of modes, including S-K-A-T-E, Jam, Deathrace, Free Skate, Best Trick and many others. You can also earn experience in certain types of modes, ranking yourself up.

To be honest, I'd recommend Skate, purely for the fact that it feels a lot more realistic than the Tony Hawk games, has great graphics and a good storyline. Even despite its flaws, its still a good, fun game.