Tony Hawk's American Sk8land

As someone who has played many of the previous Tony Hawk's games, I am already at a reasonable level of skill at getting combos and performing tricks and so I jumped straight into this game wondering,
a) (How) are they going to implement the touch screen capabilities?
b) how are they going to use the two screens?

The touch screen contains a map and also, when you get to full power, some touchable special tricks. The map is an interesting feature, as it easily allows you to see where you need to go next, who you need to talk to and where particular skate points are. This means that you can easily manoeuvre your way through that different areas with ease.
The touch screen moves seem a bit pointless and easy, gone are the days when a combo move would require seven different button pushes and then you would just wipe out anyway, or trying to correct an angle after button mashing your way to a huge combo. Now, you just press a button with your thumb and it does it all for you. Too easy in my opinion. The touch screen moves automatically alter depending on what you are doing at the time, if you are grinding then it has grinding moves, manualing it has special moves for that. The only difficulty you have with this is that when you are grinding, you can get distracted by where you are putting your thumb and wipe out.

The graphics are very comic bookesque and I think that it works quite well although it does mean that the levels lose some of their depth, and a drop that would look spectacular on one of the previous games, looks a little mundane on this one.

The controls are the same as always.

The gameplay is the same as it has been in the last few games, skating round, looking for people to perform menial tasks that they are too lazy to do themselves for a few hundred dollars at a time. This is a formula that is getting a little tired now, how many times can you collect someone's camera for them, just for them to realise they have no film and send you for that before it becomes a little tedious.
There are two modes to this, the new mode and the old-school mode where you get half a dozen tasks to do in two minutes.

Overall, this game is fun, not challenging, interesting or exciting, but it's fun. Has little longevity but kept me amused for a few days.

Gameplay 68%
Graphics 65%
DS/TS 30%
Longevity 25%

Overall 65%