Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (Wii)

Grab your deck and drop into the extreme speed of downhill racing in Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam.

In a nutshell:
The Wii is getting its very own custom made Tony Hawk's game as Activision focuses on racing and proving that the Wii can do next generation graphics that would've been impossible on the GameCube.

The lowdown:
There have been an awful lot of Tony Hawk's games over the years but they've always been fairly similar in scope with open-ended levels and an emphasis on stunts. This game completely reverses the usual mix as you compete in a variety of downhill events against the clock and other skateboarders. Since it's essentially a race game you hold the Wii Remote horizontally, as in racers such as Excite Truck, while the '1' button is used to grind, the '2' button to jump and the D-pad to select different tricks. It's all surprisingly intuitive and the way that performing tricks feeds your turbo boost bar is a clever mix of risk and reward. Although the tracks are pretty fantastical they're at least based on real cities, with a pleasing amount of shortcuts and secrets in what promises to be another top notch racer for the Wii.

Most exciting moment:
Although they're all downhill races of some sort the game includes many different types of competitions, from checkpoint races to slaloms and trick races. The most obviously amusing though is the "special" races which task you with knocking down pedestrians and road side bric-a-brac.

Since you ask:
The game is completely separate to Tony Hawk's Project 8 on the other home consoles. In actual fact it is a homage to the old Electronic Arts game Skate or Die! from 1987, which also features downhill skateboarding and is apparently the real Tony Hawk's favourite ever game.

The bottom line:
Tony Hawk turns his attention from tricks to racing in this welcome series diversion.-HARRISON DENT