Pros: Great gameplay, good replay value
Cons: Occasional bad camera angles

A few days ago my roommate bought this game, every since I haven't been able to stop playing it. I'm not really into skateboarding but this game is still loads of fun. There nothing like landing a 38,000 point trick.

Gameplay

There are several modes of play included with this game. You can free skate, play a career, or play two player mode. Free skate lets you skate around a specific park for as long as you want, so you can get a feel for it. Though most of the tracks are locked when you first start out.

To unlock them you must play career mode and win a certain amount of money. Each track has 10 tasks you can perform, each task is worth a set dollar amount. You can use the money you've won to buy new tricks, buy new stats, or buy new boards. Don't worry about spending that money though, the game still keeps track of your career total. Your career total is what's used to unlock new tracks.

All in all there are eight tracks you can skate on. Once you've beaten it with one character you can play with another, or make your own character. When you make your own character you can pick his hair, shirt, shoes, shirt logo, etc, etc. If you somehow get sick of the eight provided parks you can go into the park editor and make your very own skating park.

Graphics

The graphics are pretty good as far as playstation graphics go. There are some minor flaws now and then but over all they are very good.

Mutliplayer

There are several two player modes. You can free skate, play horse, do trick attack, or play graffiti, or play tag. When you play horse one player has to do a trick in 10 seconds, then the next player has to do a trick in the same place in 10 seconds. If the second player beats the first player's score the first player gets a chance to beat the new high score. Who ever doesn't beat the high score gets a letter, first one to get HORSE loses.

Graffiti is my personal favorite. When ever you do a trick on an object it turns to your color. There're are big strategies on this one. You can go around and capture as many new objects as you can, or you can go and steal your oppenents. To steal you simply have to perform a trick with higher points than your oppenent did on that spot.

Down sides

There are some down sides to this game, though not enough to warrent a star loss. The biggest problem with the game is the camera angles. Sometimes the view is just terrible, this doesn't happen often but enough to be annoying. The second problem is with skating in pools (these are drained pools, very good for doing tricks in.) Sometimes you get stuck skating around the lip of the pool, making your skater go parrell with the ground, simply not possible but happens quite a bit in this game.

Conclusion

This is a really great game. I recommend purchasing it if you're into skating at all. Even if you're not, like I'm not, it's still a really fun game in both career, and two player modes. Perhaps the best part of this game is it's sound track. While skating you'll hear a random song for a list of about 15. The artists range from Rage Against the Machine to Papa Roach.