In the era of the excellent Tony Hawk skateboarding games courtesy of Neversoft, there have been a plethora of games that have tried to copy the Tony Hawk formula. Unfortunately, none of them have given gamers anything really worthwhile except a number of different licenses. The latest game to follow is ESPN X Games Skateboarding. Initially the presentation is incredible part in thanks to the ESPN license. However, once you get past the nice interface, the game literally falls apart.

Graphics
As already mentioned, the presentation is one of the best ever seen complete with all kinds of little neat things. Complete with 3D previews for everything and very detailed equipment and clothing menu selections. Just as you are getting excited, you head out into the actual game to be miserably let down. At least at first. The first couple of levels are small in comparison to most skating games. As a result, you end up banging into everything and have an extremely difficult time trying to gain control of your skater. Aliasing issues abound everywhere. Draw-in is awful and the game slows down at almost every turn. Not is all lost however. If you can put up with this mess early in the game, things tend to get a little better. Levels such as the Passenger Liner and Museum levels show some really good visuals in terms of technical flair. Later levels open up and actually allow you to skate and explore. The aliasing problems continue throughout the game and give you that jaggy appearance. Draw-in and pop-up in outside levels can be severe and cause further slowdowns. As for the animations of the skaters, their design is somewhere between those found in Hawk 1 and 2 but are not up to par with what we are seeing from Tony Hawk 3. Each of the skaters moves are nicely done but it is hard to really notice any flair they have due to the aliasing problems and slowdown in the tighter areas.

Sound
What appears to be the norm for skating and snowboarding games is some hybrid mix of punk rock and alternative rock. Not to say it is a bad thing but we are now getting the same songs on two or three games. It does not really do anything for the game in an attempt to distance itself from other titles. The announcer is also quite annoying. The fact that repetition occurs way to early does not help either. The only game in the genre that has ever made good of an announcer is SSX, and he even tires quickly.

Gameplay
The control mechanism is not as tight and responsive as it should be. As a result, crashing into items and rails is a regular occurrence. Trying to figure out the timing needed to jump an ollie and land it on the real is generally too demanding. You need to jump much too far away and this makes things awkward and unforgiving. Perhaps part of the control issue has to do with the level design in terms of intersecting lines. You need a lot of intersecting lines in order to pull off combos and keep your adrenaline pumping. X Games fails to deliver this. The play modes include: Practice, Arcade, Score Attack, Free Skate, 2-player, and X Games mode. The later is interesting as in it attempts to bring to life the real-life events found in the actual X Games competitions. The problem is they are not exactly inspiring or fun to play. Rolling back and forth on the half pipe trying to pull off moves without repetition becomes a memory test rather than something skillful. Alternatively, the street course is too small to really get anything going. On the plus side is the varied trick selection. The number of moves available is just behind Tony Hawk 2 and are divided into four categories: flips, air tricks, grabs and grinds. Good but to rotate a trick you have to use the lower shoulder buttons. Thus, your fingers will get tired having when on ramps. Special tricks can be accomplished by filling all of the three-stage special meter. In this category, X Games does a good job but it does little to forgive the rest of the lacking experience.

Final Word
Here we have another one of those scenarios where a superior product has been created and the only way to compete with it is to copy that experience and enhance it. X Games Skateboarding falls much too short to even come close to replicating the Tony Hawk experience. There is room for improvement in future iterations of the franchise, but by then the developers will have to contend with the likes of Tony Hawk 3 which will include online components. In the meantime, if you are desperate for a skateboarding game, take this one for a rental. Otherwise, Hawk 3 is just around the corner.