iPhone Pick: 'Skater Nation'

The skateboarding genre has fallen off the radar lately. While Skate has done wonders in reviving the flagging sport in recent years, it lacked the buzz that flagship franchise Tony Hawk generated in its PlayStation heyday. It's a horse that has been practically flogged to death, going too far with exploration and customisation, and has reached the point where nothing about the sport can excite us anymore.

However, Skater Nation on iPhone is certainly worth mentioning. It's a fully 3D skate exploration game scaled to a portable device, with an impressive frame rate and bold visual style, along with a range of open explorable environments. Scale towering cranes to reach rooftop skate parks, grind down steep hills and launch off giant ramps next to sandy beaches: the host city houses a bit of everything, and the scale of it all is incredibly impressive. Each environment can be travelled to manually, linked together by city streets or through fast travel via a map.



While the areas match the open-ended scale of modern skate games, the straightforward objectives hark back to the early days of Neversoft's finest. Each area has challenges that give you the standard skater tasks, from clocking up high scores to finding trucks hidden in the environment or pulling off a check list of moves. Although these mission types repeat themselves from area to area, the variety in the settings helps to keep things interesting. Objectives always come with helpful tips, leaving it down to the skill of the player, and are mostly straightforward to pass barring a notable mission or two.

However, like many console-centric genres on the system, it falters with controls. Tricks themselves are wonderfully simple, with an on-screen A button handling ollies, while B does everything from grinds to manuals, depending on the context. But when it comes to movement, the analogue stick is a little clumsy, turning too sharply, especially at higher speeds or when trying to launch from a ramp of half-pipe. The biggest gripe of all is attempting to grind a hand rail, which requires a horrifyingly high degree of accuracy. It's easily ignored since you can grind fine elsewhere, but when a challenge requires it, it's horribly frustrating. Luckily such tasks are few and far between.



An interesting feature is the replay functionality, which allows you to crop the last few minutes of play to upload to YouTube (the results of which can be seen in the two videos above). Cropping with accuracy is difficult thanks to tiny icons on the replay bar, and while the videos don't show challenges or objects on the HUD, it's a great feature that tops off a truly rich and enjoyable title. It's a little on the short side, lasting between three to four hours to see through every objective, and makes for some relatively easy Gameloft Live achievements if you're that way inclined. Barring a few control issues, it shows that open exploration on the iPhone can be done well, and we can hope a potential sequel takes these ideas further.

Skater Nation is available on the App Store for £3.99. What are your thoughts on the game? Add a comment in the space below!