Fantastic control feel, hard to master - but way more realistic than Tony Hawk's sci-fi skating, try the demo at least!
The city is very nice, made for skating - there are people and cars moving about, serving to simulate real life street skating, it's ok - but you tend to get very annoyed when the people wont move out of your way on trick challenges.. (10 seconds is a long time to wait, if it's your 100th time at a trick attempt, it kinda gets on the nerves) - but hey who said games are supposed to be all easy and not get on peoples nerves! - It makes landing a trick all the sweeter!
The one thing I am most annoyed about is that the character falls on the ground WAY WAY WAY to much.. sometimes just slighty touching an object will cause the dude to slam to the ground, which is to the point of crazy!!
But you just need to get used to how the game plays, and you won't fall as much, but the developers should have spend more time on making him fall less, than analyzing what body parts he injured in the fall, since that is completely useless info, although at times amusing.
Playing the demo I didn't understand why Gamespot had nominated it for "2007's most shameless sponsor plug".. but playing the real game its to the point of vomiting how many sponsor deals they made and how its infiltrated all over.. But hey it's a skating game, and skaters wear skaters clothes.. But this is like a digital skaters shop, when u qualify for sponsorship it will show links to real life websites where you can order the clothes for yourself etc.. So a but too much, but I don't really mind it, it's just a shame I feel like a stone age ex-skater not even knowing many of the skating companies or pro's anymore ;-)
With all this said, I bought the game because of it's controls and so I wouldn't have to play the demo anymore (it's confined to a skate park), and have access to the whole city, career mode and playing freeskate online.