Welcome to DS on DS. This is where I'm going to be taking a look at the Nintendo DS and all of it's games. And when I say all, I mean it. We will be going from Metroid Prime: Hunters to Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends. From Tetris DS to Barbie 12 Dancing Princesses. Yes, I said Barbie.

Today I am going to be taking a look at Skate It.

It's no real secret that the two Skate games on the Xbox 360 are two of my all time favorite games.  In fact, the first Skate is one of my most played games on the system.  So, when EA announced Skate It on the Wii and DS, I was excited and extremely skeptical.  I mean, they were taking the games and watering them down for these other systems.  I finally got my hands on the DS version of Skate It and I have been playing it for the last few days.  How does it stack up?

Compared to the Tony Hawk games on the DS, all of which I found to be pretty good games, Skate It is better.  Much like it's big brothers on the 360 and PS3, Skate It uses a touchscreen version of the Flick It controls. It takes a while to get used to drawing on a touchscreen compared to using the Right Stick on a 360 controller, but once you get used to it you can pull of some pretty sweet lines.  It still feels a little odd though.  I got acclimated to the controls pretty easily, but they still felt real strange to use.

The game takes place in a wrecked version of San Van as well as different locations around the world.  Everything is set up similar to the Tony Hawk games where you have closed off locations as opposed to an open world.  This is understandable given the limitations of the DS hardware, but it sucks when you are used to being able to just go anywhere right from the get-go.  It's like going from the school slut to the girl in band who has never so much as held hands with a boy.  It's jarring.

Graphically, this game kills any of the Tony Hawk games available on the DS.  When you start the game off in the Community Center, you will instantly recognize it.  The same can be said for the other locations in San Van.  They look like the locations from the original Skate, only slightly wrecked.  It really looks like they took Skate and squeezed it in a vice clamp until all of the graphical juices started oozing out of it and they ended up with what you see on your DS screens.

Look, if you like Skate or Skate 2, and you want a good realistic-style skater on your DS, Skate It is a good way to go.

Final score - 8/10