The talented developers at Vicarious Visions made a big name for themselves with a semi-3D, surprisingly faithful adaptation of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 at the GBA launch. Although they didn't quite make the launch window for Nintendo DS, the company has once again shattered expectations for a Nintendo handheld with the Tony Hawk franchise. American Sk8Land is heavily based on the most recent console game, American Wasteland, but Sk8Land follows a different storyline and lacks some features, which is a good thing in a few cases.

But while playing Sk8Land on the DS, you'll be too busy enjoying what is included to worry about the stuff that had to be left out. This game has nearly every move ever included in the console series, including all the flips, grabs, grinds, reverts, lip tricks, and manuals, plus more recent additions such as spine transfers, natas spins, and bert slides. The only moves noticeably absent are the ones in which you get off the skateboard and run around, jumping and hanging on ledges. Those mechanics have been quite poor in the console games, so not having to deal with them actually makes Sk8Land feel tighter and more polished than its source material.

The story mode introduces your created character to Los Angeles, where you meet the legendary Tony Hawk and an excruciating skater chick, Mindy. Tony likes your moves and clues you in on a nearby warehouse that was once a famous skatepark but is now run down. The three of you set out to earn money around town to fix up the warehouse and eventually buy the property from the land owner to protect it for good. The story scenes are presented sort of like Flash movies, with a lot of voice acting (Hawk is excellent, Mindy is ear-splitting). Of course, the whole idea of making $250 from a tourist just to perform a kickflip off someone's rooftop is absurd, and the text introducing these missions is accordingly tongue-in-cheek.

Throughout story mode, you'll have periodic chances to buy new pieces for the warehouse with the money you've earned. You'll also meet up with several other professional skaters, who give you more challenging tasks but also pay more. By the end of the game, you'll get to skate in the warehouse itself, which you've been customizing the whole time, and you even get a chance to skate as the pros, who want to show off in the restored skatepark.

As in the console game, story mode is basically an extended tutorial that introduces you to all the moves, from basic to advanced. It's great for beginners, but experienced players will likely be bored, because most of the missions are very straightforward. For the Tony Hawk veterans, the game also includes a classic mode with two-minute runs on all of the game's levels. The classic goals tend to be much more challenging, and they take place on all the same levels, so you could completely skip story mode and still explore the game's big, detailed levels. Unfortunately, there are no old levels included for classic mode, so Sk8Land offers about half as much skating real estate as American Wasteland.

The most impressive thing about Sk8Land is how great it looks and how perfectly it reproduces the physics and controls of the console games. The cel-shaded visual style is new for the Tony Hawk series, and it looks fantastic while obviously playing to the technical strengths of the DS hardware. The game runs extremely smoothly and always has enough draw distance to see the level itself (though people and small items tend to pop in at close range, which is a problem). The controls are spot on and are actually an improvement over the console versions, since you can activate focus mode and special tricks by reaching your thumbs over to the touch screen for a quick tap on the appropriate panel. The touch icons are located at the edges of the screen, and after a bit of practice, you won't even have to look down to use this great feature. The touch screen is also used for the Freak Out feature, which lets you recover some points from a failed combo. Three bars rise and fall like pistons on the screen, and you have to touch them when they're full to build up the Freak Out meter. It's a definite improvement over the button-mashing method normally used for this feature.

Other than its sharp looks, Sk8Land is most distinguished for being the first third-party DS game to use Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. It's easy to set up, just like Mario Kart DS, but Sk8Land offers far more diverse online features than Nintendo's flagship title. Entering friend codes works the same, but after connecting to the service, you can immediately see which friends are online and connect to them if they're available. If your friends aren't around, the auto-match feature will connect you to a random player within seconds. From there, you're both dumped into a freeskate session and can start up one of the multiplayer challenges from the pause menu. The new Price is Wrong mode is fun, but some classics like Horse and Graffiti are missing. Honestly though, Tony Hawk multiplayer just isn't a huge draw, because there's no way to really interact with the other characters in a way that feels like a natural part of skateboarding. Sk8Land also only allows for two-player games, which rules out any sort of team strategy. However, there are other online features that really do extend the game's appeal. You can register an account at the game's official website and link the account to your game, allowing you to upload high scores and custom decals to the website and download bonus missions and even replays of the best players in the world. The replay feature is especially great, because you can learn how to link up moves and reach secret areas in the levels by watching the experts. Overall, Mario Kart DS is a far better multiplayer game, but Sk8Land shows the versatility of the online service and still offers some cool features that are worth checking out.

Taken on its own, Sk8Land is an incredible leap over the GBA versions, which were already impressive. It may be the best looking DS game yet, and it matches the console experience to a degree that you'd expect only on the PSP. It's also a great start for third-party online games, even outpacing Nintendo's own offering in many respects. The main problem with Sk8Land is that it's somewhat redundant with American Wasteland but with half as many levels, so if you have already played through the console version, you may get bored with the DS game once the novelty wears off. But if you passed on Wasteland, and especially if you haven't played a Tony Hawk game in a few years, Sk8Land is truly a must-own title on the Nintendo DS.