After the fantastic version on the Wii, i decided to treat myself to the DS version. Im quite glad that i did not spend more than ?9.99 on it, as the game is full of small glitches, combine that with unresposive controls and boring gameplay.
Its clear that the developers have gone for quantity over quality, as the game tries to cram everything and more from the Wii version, on the DS. This is met with mixed results....
Tony Hawk's American Sk8land was the first Tony Hawk game to reach the DS and IMO the developers did a fantastic all round job of getting the gameplay/graphics/sound/and features into the game. However, this time the results are less than favourable, in a few key areas that i will underline.
Graphics
The game is very weak in the graphical department, which is a bit confising as the cel shading graphical style was done to almost perfection in Tony Hawk's American Sk8land. This time everything is fuzzy, flowers (which you can grind?) are fuzzy, characters don't look as polished, even the menu and custom board creation (i will talk more on that later) look poor. The DS is capable of so much more and i would have been happy with graphics similar to those found in Tony Hawk's American Sk8land.
Controls
Not the greatest use of the control system either.
A to crouch
B to grab
X to use boost
y to grind
L+R spin
This system makes it tough to boost into a trick for extra air.
Gameplay
The game expands a bit on the setup from the Wii version, you have challenges to complete which range from races, one on one races, elimination races, trick runs and a few others that i am yet to play.
However i want to single out the style challenges, in this event you have to earn style points and beat the computer racers style scores to win the gold medal. However due to the very bad design of the game i keep encountering the same problems:
Ramps that send you out of bounds (which results in your score going down as its counted as a bail.
Also i am not 100% sure if this is because my characters stats are so low but i get sloppy rating for every trick, even if its landed correctly. This has a major impact on this event as you lose points for a sloppy landing, so i may gain 2 style points for the trick but you lose 2 for the landing. Again these scores seam to be randomly generated at times. But what gets on my nerves so much is the fact the computer racers bump into you and you lose score you bump into them and you lose score so you can't win. Also the position of some grinding cables, are right at the top of some jumps, but in this version you go near them to grind and 9/10 you hit them and bail mid air. If you are lucky enough to grind them you lose any score you may have in the current combo (don't ask me why).
However one good point about the game is the soundtrack. It takes some of the popular tracks from the Wii version and adds some new tracks to the mix, in total i think the game has about 15 full length music tracks, so far all of those seam of a good quality.
The game also boasts some impressive multiplayer and online features, however i am yet to try any of these out so will not comment.
Overall as a convert to the Downhill Jam series on the Wii and a fan of the previous GBA and DS games, i should have loved this title, but sadly at ?9.99 i think i have been ripped off.
If the game grows on me or i discover anything that needs adding i will do so.
Its clear that the developers have gone for quantity over quality, as the game tries to cram everything and more from the Wii version, on the DS. This is met with mixed results....
Tony Hawk's American Sk8land was the first Tony Hawk game to reach the DS and IMO the developers did a fantastic all round job of getting the gameplay/graphics/sound/and features into the game. However, this time the results are less than favourable, in a few key areas that i will underline.
Graphics
The game is very weak in the graphical department, which is a bit confising as the cel shading graphical style was done to almost perfection in Tony Hawk's American Sk8land. This time everything is fuzzy, flowers (which you can grind?) are fuzzy, characters don't look as polished, even the menu and custom board creation (i will talk more on that later) look poor. The DS is capable of so much more and i would have been happy with graphics similar to those found in Tony Hawk's American Sk8land.
Controls
Not the greatest use of the control system either.
A to crouch
B to grab
X to use boost
y to grind
L+R spin
This system makes it tough to boost into a trick for extra air.
Gameplay
The game expands a bit on the setup from the Wii version, you have challenges to complete which range from races, one on one races, elimination races, trick runs and a few others that i am yet to play.
However i want to single out the style challenges, in this event you have to earn style points and beat the computer racers style scores to win the gold medal. However due to the very bad design of the game i keep encountering the same problems:
Ramps that send you out of bounds (which results in your score going down as its counted as a bail.
Also i am not 100% sure if this is because my characters stats are so low but i get sloppy rating for every trick, even if its landed correctly. This has a major impact on this event as you lose points for a sloppy landing, so i may gain 2 style points for the trick but you lose 2 for the landing. Again these scores seam to be randomly generated at times. But what gets on my nerves so much is the fact the computer racers bump into you and you lose score you bump into them and you lose score so you can't win. Also the position of some grinding cables, are right at the top of some jumps, but in this version you go near them to grind and 9/10 you hit them and bail mid air. If you are lucky enough to grind them you lose any score you may have in the current combo (don't ask me why).
However one good point about the game is the soundtrack. It takes some of the popular tracks from the Wii version and adds some new tracks to the mix, in total i think the game has about 15 full length music tracks, so far all of those seam of a good quality.
The game also boasts some impressive multiplayer and online features, however i am yet to try any of these out so will not comment.
Overall as a convert to the Downhill Jam series on the Wii and a fan of the previous GBA and DS games, i should have loved this title, but sadly at ?9.99 i think i have been ripped off.
If the game grows on me or i discover anything that needs adding i will do so.
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