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Intense

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 10
Date: October 26, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Fans of TH: American Sk8land are going to find Downhill Jam very familiar.

Using the same game engine as Sk8land, the design team has tweaked the gameplay ever so slightly to keep the experience fresh, while at the same time making learning the game very intuitive.

Going away from the typical Tony Hawk roaming around a city, Downhill Jam lays tracks out for you to race, trick, and combo on. This linear fashion of play by no means takes away from the feel of the franchise. The tone of the entire game is fast pace. You have to bust out tricks constantly in order to fuel your boost meter and there are tons of classic racing game shortcuts to save you those extra precious few seconds.

A welcome addition, for myself at least, is the fact that. if you end a trick sloppy, your character will wobble and slow down. It's a nice little touch that'll ultimately make you better.

The stats have been busted down to 4 (speed, air, trick, and balance,) which can be increased by getting gold medals in each city you visit. Honestly, for this game, that's all you need to worry about.

A criticism
- Bert sliding, a control not even mentioned in the Sk8land manual, is used heavily. Whereas in the previous Tony Hawk DS installment these were executed by hitting L and a direction, in DJ each of the shoulder buttons bert slides you a different direction. This, of course, means reverts have been removed. Instead, once you land a trick there is a certain amount of time for you to manual before a combo ends. There have been a couple of times now where I wanted to end a combo to set up for a bigger one but, instead, had to wait a second for the previous one to end. If you accidentally start the new one too soon you risk getting off balance on a grind and bailing (which, trust me, in a race you definitely don't want.)

In all, Tony Hawk: Downhill Jam is a wonderful addition to the franchise. If you've played Sk8land, the controls are almost the same making it easier to get acclimated to the game experience. Of course, if you're new to the DS games, there's plenty of training levels to get you going. Oh yeah, after you get done playing it, Sk8land is going to see mighty sloooooow. :)

Not as good as I had hoped

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: November 16, 2006
Author: Amazon User

With all the other systems getting a traditionally themed Tony Hawk game, the Nintendo portables (and the Wii) are getting a Tony Hawk game with a new spin. Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam takes the series from it's traditional trick and mission based roots and makes it into a downhill racing game. Now this premise sounds promising at first, and considering Tony's first trip on the DS (the excellent American Sk8land), there were high hopes for his latest trip on Nintendo's dual screened portable. Sadly though, Downhill Jam is disappointing in it's delivery, making for only an average racing game that has some noticeable bugs and a haphazard Wi-Fi capability. The first thing you'll notice is that the great cell-shaded graphics from American Sk8land are back, and some of the Tony Hawk goals and unlockables are here as well, but the racing itself isn't very exciting, and the Tony Hawk trick system that tries to be implemented in the racing doesn't match up well. Not to mention that there are plenty of times where the game just locks up out of nowhere. This is so annoying that you'll get frustrated to the point you'll throw your DS, and most disappointing of all is that the online multiplayer options takes so long to get into that you'll lose interest quickly. Despite all that, Downhill Jam has some good points going for it, but it's only a rental at best.

Best DS Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 7
Date: October 29, 2006
Author: Amazon User

this is the type of game that was the best of E3, and has enough flare to play forever! anyone can pick it up!! GREAT GAME!!!!!!!!

Unclear information on my purchase

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 6
Date: March 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I wasn't able to purchase this game from Amazon. I got a message that my credit card was credited for the amount of this game, but it wasn't clear enough that they could deliver this game, neither the reason. So I had to figure out that it wouldn't be available, and I ended buying it myself in another store. But the game was in stock when I entered my order.
It is a good game but probably your kid need to be really into the skating world to take more of it.

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