Tony Hawk: Ride really brings something new to the video game table. The skateboard controller looks simple enough for a kid to get on and mess around, but it also packs a major technological punch.

Personally, I found the skateboard controller to be terrifying at first, but it soon became very natural. Making the mistake of wearing big-ass boots to this event, my feet were larger and heavier than normal, as well as slightly elevated on a chunk of a wooden heel, and I almost fell off a number of times, and actually did once or twice. Regardless, I started to get into the swing of things, and wound up actually learning how to do tricks, a level that I never reached in my button-mashing days of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 on Nintendo 64.

Aesthetically, the board has a gray top with a really nice wing design on it in a darker gray (get it, Tony Hawk?). The bottom half of the board is white, something that separates it from the older prototype, which was black. The control buttons run along the side of the board that your heels rest on, so if you ride Goofy you will need to flip the board around. One of the hardest steps for me was tapping the side button with my toe (my gigantic, booted toe) and then ollieing to select Regular. I wound up playing Goofy one round and actually did amazing, but a repeat at that attempt proved it was really just a false alarm.

On the middle of the sides there are sensors, which you wave your hand in front of to activate grabs. For instance, doing an ollie and waving your hand in front will pull off a nose grab. However, sometimes people around you can inadvertently interrupt the sensor, so be aware of where you're standing when your buddy is playing the game.

Finally, I want to talk about how the board actually feels on the ground: really comfortable. After the initial fear that I was going to fall off or break the board or some other embarrassing and potentially dangerous stunt, I found that it was really smooth. Anyone could easily rock heel to toe, Ollies and nollies were simple enough, and from watching people pull off 180s and other twists, it seems like something that would be relatively simple to get into after a few hours with a game. Just ask Neal, he was pulling them off frequently.

To conclude, I'm going to leave you off with some words of obvious wisdom: stretch before you play. I woke up this morning after two hours or so of gaming last night, and I could definitely feel it in my legs. Tony Hawk: Ride is secretly a fitness game in disguise, but the type of fitness game that even when you find out, you don't care you were tricked because it's incredibly too much fun. Plus, there's also no insults after you don't play the game for awhile *cough, Wii Fit, cough*.