Review by: Jason McMaster

I stare at the skateboard controller and heave a deep sigh. I have to get on that damned thing again and pretend to ride while my unresponsive avatar screws up every trick I attempt. "Why in the HELL WON'T YOU JUST OLLIE," I shout at my television. "Oh man, now I've swerved off into a wall again." I teeter back and forth trying to balance and slightly turn my skater around and back towards the course. That's the Tony Hawk: Ride experience according to Jason McMaster.

The game sports three basic game modes. Single player is where most people will spend their time as it contains exhibition and Road Trip (career). Party Mode lets you and your friends take turns hating the game together on individual stages, and Online is basically Party Mode over the Internet with your friends that you couldn't warn in time.

If you play on the lowest difficulty level, you don't really steer anything. You kind of lurch towards the path you want to go, represented by different arrows pointing in different directions, and kind of just… go that way. It’s basically a Rail-Skater. Not like grinding rails, that would make sense, but a game that makes you go in one direction and you participate by reacting to on-screen prompts. "Oh, here comes a trick marker, time to flail around on my skateboard!"

Doesn’t that sound great? However, I'd rather play on casual than wander into the maddening hell that is the higher difficulty levels. You see, you're still confined to your skateboard but your lurching and heaving about will easily change the direction you're going. If you could pick up your board or walk to where you want to try a trick, this wouldn't be such a bad thing, but that's not the case. When you start at the beginning of a level, you push off and when you get back on the board you might accidentally lean a bit. This lean then aims you directly into a wall. You lean to try and correct your heading and end up going into another wall. The slightest tilt can send your avatar careening into peril.

Of course, if you don't want to street skate, there's always vert tricks. While not as face-stabbingly irritating as the street parts, the vertical game doesn't do anything that spectacular either. Positioning yourself on the board, buttons away from the TV, you pull off different motions corresponding to the trick you'd like to perform once your character has reached a certain part of the pipe or a certain height in the air. You'll be performing most of the same actions with the board, which is to say you'll wobble back and forth and put your hands near sensors, but at least you don't have to steer.