Skateboarding is an extreme sport and in games it needs to be even more extreme, with petty details like safety and gravity overcome and bent to serve the player. However in Skate It, the extreme in 'extreme sports' is replaced by frustrating, lifeless and just a bit dull.

Skate It has three major playing modes - Career, Freeskate and Party Play - but first you'll want to head to the Tutorial mode to get a feel for the game and how it uses the Wiimote. Skate It has three control schemes on offer; Wiimote only, Wiimote and Nunchuk, and the far more exciting Balance Board. The Wiimote-only system is the simplest option but by no means the easiest; the Wiimote controls every movement your skater carries out, from tricks and spins to simply gaining speed and steering the skateboard around. Tilting the Wiimote slightly to the left and right makes your skater lean in each direction while holding A increases your speed. Attaching the Nunchuk means that the Wiimote is just used to pull off tricks, with steering allocated to the analogue stick. All of the tricks and grabs are performed by the Wiimote in either playing style and flicking the Wiimote in different ways causes your skater to perform a number of 'kickflips' and 'shuvits', while pressing the B button in midair causes you to grab the board, which can be tweaked by tilting the Wiimote left or right or made into a more thrilling one-footed grab by holding A during the trick. There's nothing particularly spectacular about the tricks and only the trained skating eye can tell a 'hard flip' from a 'laser flip'.

Unfortunately, it is incredibly difficult to maintain speed and momentum, something that is imperative for a extreme sports title. This makes grabs nigh impossible to use, meaning that you have to rely on the various kick flips to maintain point combos. It seems that the idea of Skate It is to perform 'lines' by combining a number of tricks in a single sequence that can be tied together with grinds and manuals. However, the grinds, unlike other skateboarding titles, are quite difficult in Skate It; the game is more realistic in the sense that how much of the board is actually on a rail determines how tricky it is to keep your balance, which is all well and good but it becomes increasingly more frustrating when an ill-timed jump means that you lose momentum and your line is messed up, especially as later challenges require such pinpoint accuracy in grinding. Manuals are another imperative for keeping trick combinations going; while stationary or upon landing, you can tilt the Wiimote back or forward to have your skater lean on either end of the board. This keeps trick lines going but the sheer delicateness of the task can usually end up with you accidentally jumping or kick flipping your board.

All the tricks are found in the Trickbook in the in-game menu, with a picture description of how to use the Wiimote to perform the trick. Serious players will be going back again and again to remember how the Wiimote needs to be tilted and flicked to perform the tricks they want and, as you might expect, a lot of the tricks use similar motions - so don't be surprised if you accidentally perform one trick over another. The simplicity of the trick system seems tailored more towards the Balance Board than any other control style, which isn't exactly fair due to the shortage and cost of the board itself. The Board acts like a flat Wiimote and you lean on different portions to perform different flips and steer. You also hold the Wiimote to perform grabs and to build up momentum with A. The game just seems to lack the heft it has when playing with any other controller other than the board, meaning that the vast majority of gamers won't experience the best it has to offer.

It isn't necessarily the lack of impressive tricks and tough control scheme that makes Skate It unappealing to play, but rather the dull, lifeless levels that lack any kind of creative design or interesting features. It is also unfortunate there are a lot of them too; each of Skate It's levels are housed across six locations, including America, France, the UK, Brazil and China. There are a few levels that do hold better trick possibilities with a large number of impressive ramps and jumps allowing the player to perform some decent grabs, but the majority of levels are flat and far too expansive. The levels can be edited with 'My Spot' areas throughout the game by pressing 2 while near one; you can then modify these key areas by moving and rotating half pipes and ramps or even smaller objects like benches and rails. However, this feature is extremely limited and sometimes even completely restricted; a lot of objects don't want to be moved even though the game allows you to highlight them, although many are unlocked throughout the career mode for these small level editors, which can allow some creativity later on in the game.

The main portion of the game is played through the Career mode, where create your skater, choosing gender, facial types, clothing and skateboard accessories, as well as picking from a couple of skating styles and being able to tune your board a little. The starting location is a place in the USA known in Skate It as San Van, which has just suffered a major calamity, causing everyone to abandon their homes and flee for safety. Fortunately, the place has been left in a state prime for skateboarding and you are asked by a sincerely questionable guy with a camera to perform tricks that can be published for Thrasher magazine.

At the start of every level there are a number of challenges that need to be completed before moving on and unlocking more areas to skate in. Upon entering a section of the level that has a challenge, or by simply accepting the challenge via the main menu, you need to perform tricks on a specific portion of the level, usually involving some sort of grind or ramp. Each challenge has its own stipulations but mostly they require a serious of tricks in one run, without pausing via the use of grinds and manuals or before time runs out. Unfortunately, if you should fall or otherwise go way off track then you're reset anywhere but a spot that's actually useful! More often than not, using the main menu to reset a challenge is a must. Completing these challenges unlocks a myriad of extra clothing and boards, new levels, new pro skaters and extra events to play in multiplayer mode, while milestone challenges are those centred around progressive play of individual levels. Playing levels repeatedly means completing these challenges and unlocking more items to dress your skater. These can be played over the course of the game in career mode, meaning that you need to return to previous levels.

Another type of challenge requires you to crash - horribly - which is strange, as it's something that you must usually avoid in a skateboarding game, but you're rewarded for breaking bones and tearing ligaments. These are entered into Thrasher Magazine's 'Hall of Meat' - if you're going to come a cropper then you might as well have it displayed for all to see! The challenges overall aren't too thrilling but this is a nice way to see their more interesting parts, but as mentioned before they are big and dull. Still, if you find a cool spot that you like, you can save the location and warp there with the press of a button, a nice idea that allows you to practice in any area to perfect your trick sequence. Elevators and other modes of transport also allow for quick warping around the levels, all of which can be played in Free Skate Mode, which is simply a way to enjoy a level using any pro skaters you've unlocked without having to complete annoying challenges.

The last mode on offer is multiplayer, known as Party Play. Up to four players can get involved in four different event types, starting with Best Line and Best Score, which are pretty much the same thing. In these events, each player takes a turn (evidently so that each player can use the Balance Board - no fighting now!) to perform a series of tricks within a time limit, and you can hold a series of rounds for an overall winner at the end. Different challenges earned throughout the game can be played here and there are quite a number of them. Best Time is a contest of speed, with two different courses available, where you take it in turns to hurtle down the course in attempt to be the fastest. The last mode is pretty obscure; the Hall of Meat challenges return, allowing you to determine who is the best at crashing. It's a shame that Party Play forces you to take it in turns rather than at least splitting the screen into two, if not four, but at least the option to play with friends is available.

Skate It has some good ideas but just doesn't deliver them in a package that's exciting and interesting. The game seems to be built with the Balance Board in mind, meaning that other control systems suffer because of it. There is a technical skating game in here somewhere but the sheer frustration of the gameplay and the lifeless environments mean that it's unlikely you'll stick around long enough to discover it. If you warm to the game then there's a plethora of content to unlock and a vast array of challenges to complete, it's just a shame that it fails to deliver an experience that's as compelling as the original skate.

Reviewed by Oliver Dearn for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).