Well, the first thing that will strike you about the game is the slick presentation, the menus are easy on the eyes and simple to navigate, and they've even gone to the effort of signing the names of a few bands to back their menu's, Hoobastank and P.O.D to name just a few. Also, for anyone who cares, there are a few actual professional skaters that appear in the game (Jaren Grob and Taig Khris anyone?), aswell as a couple of fictional women with bouncy breasts that put DOA3's to shame, motion captured from real models I hear…

The game plays pretty well, the control system isn't as tight as THPS3 and the Xbox controller's button placement makes pulling off tricks like 'Cess Slides' quite difficult at times, but it behaves quite similarly to the Hawk's games and if you've played those AI should be pretty easy to get the hang of. AI also includes a THPS style Arena Editor, which works quite well, and by playing through the career mode you can unlock extra pieces to play with. Another feature of the career is the attributes element, by pulling off tricks you earn XP for them, which consequently makes your skater better at them - it gives you the feeling of improvement, which is quite cool.

   

The graphics are ok, the scenery is quite solid and the amount of things going on on the levels is impressive, but after playing the game for a couple of hours you'll notice a lot of glitches that shouldn't really be there in this day and age. The character movement is occasionally dodgy, you might find yourself falling through the scenery or bouncing into the air when you 'crater', which is annoying to say the least. The blood is plentiful when you fall on your face and you can knock pedestrians over, but the lack of a gun or a grenade to take out those bleedin' taxis is disappointing, it could've been a fun unlockable extra atleast.

The levels are huge, similar in size to Dave Mirra 2 but with a lot more to interact with, you can swing from poles to reach higher places and talking to people opens up plenty of challenges to keep you busy - completing every level in AI will take you an age, whether it'll keep you interested that long is the problem.