Sports

It's a shame Neversoft can't make the Tony Hawk's series single player experience anywhere near as fun as the good old "Horse" two-player gamemode. If you're unfamiliar with Horse, it's played by taking turns. The first one up sets a benchmark with a single trick (or more likely, a combo), then the second player tries to beat it. The loser gets a letter, the first one to spell "horse" loses. I played Horse with my brother last evening, it was good fun as always. I was beaten once my challenger learned his way around the Gamecube pad.

Another cool two-player event is the Amped 2 mode in which you claim trick spots (jumps, rails) by landing the best trick on them. The ride is short, the spots are plentiful and you've got time to claim them over and over again.

Speaking of Amped 2, I finally (after over a year of grinding) secured my primary avatar the coveted top-eight position in the game's fake leaderboard. After an hour more fo riding, it's only four more spots to go and I have beaten the game. There was a time I thought I'd never get to top ten, so steep was the challenge after around the 20th position. What's the deal with the blind, 100-meter drops to a two meters wide target area, huh? Regardless, I've played three characters to the mid-20s. It's a really cool game, shame that the sequel on the Xbox 360 doesn't sound like it'd appeal to me.