I was recently able to get some hands-on experience with an early build of Tony Hawk's American Sk8land, the DS installment of the wildly popular series. I came away very impressed, not only with what developer Vicarious Visions has done from a visual standpoint, but also with some of the DS-only features they've managed to incorporate into the design.

The first thing you'll notice is a complete graphical overhaul. Gone are the days of the GBA version's isometric pseudo-3-D viewpoint; the DS's added graphics power allows a fully 3-D environment that looks great and runs at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second. The decision was made to go with cel-shading for building and character models, and it was definitely a smart choice. It gives the game a unique style while making the graphics look a little bit slicker than they might otherwise. Cutscenes are hand-drawn in a goofy, 80's cartoon style and look great.

The series has always been known for above average music and sound, and this version looks to be no different. There's thirty minutes of licensed music included, and Tony Hawk as well as several other famous skaters have lent their voices to the game.

Controls mirror the PlayStation setup very closely, so avid Hawkers will be able to pick up Sk8land and start grinding immediately. The touch screen is used for Freak-Outs (after bailing, the faster you tap the screen the angrier your skater reacts), special moves (these are chosen by the player and are activated by a button that appears while you're executing tricks), and a map of the level that's displayed at all times. The map comes in extremely handy when you're trying to find your next challenge or search out a particular character.

Gameplay could be described as a mixture between American Wasteland and some of the older Tony Hawk games. It's strictly skateboarding, so you can't get off your skateboard or ride a BMX bike like in American Wasteland. The game is set in Los Angeles, where you're trying to get a skatepark called "American Sk8land" back on its feet. Like Wasteland, you're skating in one big environment instead of several separate levels. The DS's landscape is a rough approximation of the one in its console big brother; all of the landmarks are there (such as the theater with the velvet ropes outside) but things are a little smaller. There's also Classic Mode, which lets you play the story mode levels with a two-minute time limit just like the old games. On top of all that is the Create-A-Park mode that lets you build your own monster and then skate all over it.

There are some DS-exclusive customization features that bear mention as well. One is the skateboard editor, a paint program that lets you use the stylus to draw designs on your board and save them for use in the game. The other is the ability to record your own bail exclamations using the DS's built-in microphone. You record your sound bites (one for a successful trick and one for a bail), and they're played back each time the appropriate event occurs. Mine were "Damn!" for a bail and "Yeeeeah!" for a success, so let's just say I was cussing a lot. It's a great feature that becomes a guilty pleasure. Just like everyone loved to put in dirty words instead of using the word "Horse" in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, there'll be plenty of people recording dirty words in American Sk8land. And you know what? That's the point – you can do whatever you want and get away with it.

Speaking of multiplayer, Nintendo's upcoming Wi-Fi Connection will be utilized for American Sk8land's online play. You'll join an online "Skate Crew" and battle members of other crews in Trick Attack, Score Challenge, Combo Mambo, and a new mode called The Price is Wrong (you pick a score and whoever comes closest to the score wins). It looks like these modes will be strictly two-player, but you can play people from all over the world – U.S., Europe, Japan, you name it. The world is your skate park.

The online aspect is more than just multiplayer, however. Upload your board designs to an online gallery so that other players can download them (Vicarious Visions and Activision will have the ability to ban people who upload obscene stuff, so watch it), or view your scores on the game's website to see how you rank against the rest of the world. Certain content will be downloadable to your PC, and new content will be added in the future. There's also some indication of custom audio selections when playing online, although we aren't sure how that's going to work just yet. I wasn't able to try out online play myself, but I was assured that it'll be ready to go when the game launches on November 14th.

Tony Hawk's American Sk8land is going to be the first third-party Nintendo DS game to use the Wi-Fi Connection, and from what I've seen, it's going to do it in style. If you're jonesing for a handheld skateboarding fix, look no further…there's enough here to keep you busy for a long time.