It doesn’t. Stand up. It falls on its face and sprawls on the ground in a mess of what should, by rights, be broken bones.

No. Wait. That’s just me playing the game. I’m as rubbish as I ever was.

Just as rubbish. The same amount of rubbish.

And that, you see, is because – ta da! – it’s the same game! It runs perfectly, the controls are so good I could kiss them and it’s just exactly like playing the game on the Playstation, except now it’s on my phone.

Oh crap, oh crap, I am going to die.

HOORAY!

The two-minute time limits are perfect for handheld gaming, it looks pretty nice shrunk down and it’s much faster than the more realistic skaters we’ve been playing lately.

So, yes, excellent stuff. I just wish I was better at it. And that I could remember where the secret tapes were.

After forty-five minutes, I was ready to set the disc on fire and rocket it into orbit. I can’t do the tutorial. You heard me. I can’t do the bloody tutorial. After much frustration I got to the sixth tutorial, about combos, but couldn’t do the first part of that.

So I gave up and started the game. I’m rubbish. Really rubbish. Best combo is current about 25,000 points. That’s nothing, in this over-complicated day of reverts and manuals and everything. I miss the old days when everything was so much simpler.

But, the thing is, I’ve started to have fun. The Nail The Trick thing is excellent, the game’s letting me progress just by hitting the ultra-simple amateur goals (which I can just about do) and it’s got Jason Lee in it.

So I think I’ll be keeping it after all.

Unfortunately it seems a billion times harder to land tricks than in any other Tony Hawk game I’ve ever played and I don’t know why.

As my stats were utterly humiliating I decided to play it for a while to improve my scores. Now they’re only very humilating.

Result!

A combo of 56,540!

I’m great!

Well, no, I’m rubbish, but I’m great by my own low standards.

This is one of those rare games that makes me want to write a thank you letter to the developers, because they’ve really done so much more than they needed to. It’s such a nice package.

Anyway, custom boards aren’t very important. What is important is that classic mode is excellent and knowing that every run will add to the stats on the web site make even rubbish runs seem like they have a point. Even though goals got in classic mode don’t seem to count as far as the web site’s concerned.

I’ve done a 12 trick combo now. And a combo that got me over 30,000 points.

I know, I know, lots of people can do combos in the millions, but 30,000 is good for me, okay?

But it’s the first online DS game out in the UK, so how was I meant to resist?

Setting it up to go online was incredibly easy. I typed in my SSID and WEP password and it got on the network without a single problem. In the world of wireless networking that’s incredible. I even had a chicken here ready to sacrifice. I guess I’ll have to keep him as a pet. I’ll call him Alamo.

Didn’t do much apart from test it out, mind. I did a couple of classic runs in the wireless section and was awful. I guess I need to play offline to work things out and upgrade stats and stuff. Seems to be a decent Tony Hawk game at first glance. I’ve had a few years away from them after getting incredibly tired of the whole thing around the time of the fourth game, so it should feel at least vaguely fresh.