Shaun White is back for another round of snowboard…wait, no this time it’s skateboarding! So after 2 rounds of snowboarding games on the Wii, Shaun White is now tackling the skateboarding arena. The game promises to be a brand new take on the skateboarding game genre, but does it actually create a fun experience?

One of the core features in Shaun White Skateboarding is the ability to ‘transform your world.‘ This is not only in the way that you’re transforming the colors of the city as you skate through, but also the skating environment itself. You might see a rail and think ‘that rail is too short, I’ll create my own one that spurs off of it.’ So as you’re grinding you simply control where you want to skate next and it’ll automatically extend the rail under your board. This also applies to vert ramps and other objects in the world.

The other part of the world you transform are the colors. The world you’re in right now is devoid of color and it’s your job to bring some life back into it (sound familiar? think de Blob). As you skate around and perform tricks on vert ramps, kickers, and rails, it’ll paint the areas in all sorts of groovy colors. The more tricks you do, the more it’ll help transform the area. Transforming is very intuitive and you simply run over these areas that have color arrows. The rest of the game is similar to a Tony Hawk game, but not as unrealistic. You’re not going to be linking 500 moves into a 2,000,000 point combo. You can still do manuals and different linking of tricks but it’s mostly about doing big tricks here and there.

Graphically the game is pretty low compared to other Wii games. The graphics really look like something a generation ago and it feels like it was a step back even from the Shaun White Snowboarding games. One of the cool features is the ability to have a friend join up with you online or locally to help transform the world. There are also competitive modes, but the co-op is the most fun to play with a friend.

Despite the graphical deficiencies, Shaun White Skateboarding is a pretty good skateboarding game and actually does a lot to differentiate itself from past skateboarding games. The transforming of environments is a cool idea and is well executed.

Shaun White Skateboarding gets an 7.6/10