Tony Hawk: VERT

The world of rock music is full of stories of musicians who, having reached the limits of fame, fortune and adulation have found that their well-worn formula has grown stale. It seems that creativity is a finite resource.

Of course, there’s always one who bucks the trend. Having peaked in one direction, such stars go away, rethink their position and come back with a new sound and a new perspective.

With Tony Hawk: VERT, Glu has been commissioned to freshen up the enormously successful skateboarding franchise. It’s a bold move on Activision’s part, but a necessary one.

Fortunately, they’ve succeeded with some style, though it strikes me that VERT is something of an intial sketch of what future Tony Hawk mobile games might look like rather than a fully fleshed out product.

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What we have here is a very literal change of perspective. The action has been zoomed in on, focusing on the half pipe event, and rotated 90 degrees to form a striking head-on view.

A press of ‘down’ sets your boarder off, rolling up and down, into and away from the screen. When you reach the lips of the half-pipe you can grind along them by pressing ‘left’ or ‘right,’ or pull of a balancing stunt by pressing ‘up’ or ‘down.’ This brings up a familiar balance meter that must be kept central to maintain the trick.

Once you’re airborne you can pull of aerial tricks by pressing ‘up,’ ‘down’ or ‘okay’ for more advanced moves. The more stunts you do without falling over (which happens if you hit the floor mid-trick) the greater your speed and the higher your jumps, which affords you time to chain tricks together for more points.

Board with little to do

While the system is fun, you’ll master it extremely quickly, which places the onus on Challenges mode for longevity. Here you’re given twelve tasks, such as meeting a set points total or taking pictures of a boarder just as they’re pulling off a stunt, set across three environments (each with their own interactive background elements such as birds and trains).

While there’s the added incentive of getting an Expert rating on each stage, it won’t take you long at all to work your way through the game. Free Ride offers a limitless high-score mode, but the simplicity of the core system rules out extended play.

Tony Hawk: VERT is a slick, imaginative reboot of an established series. It has the bare bones of a great game, but needs a little more fleshing out before it can be considered as such. It's certainly moving in the right direction.