Shaun White is back with more bad hair in his upcoming skateboarding game, cleverly called Shaun White Skateboarding. If you thought the skating genre already was too crowded, well guess again. Their strategy is smart though, because the game is differentiating is a number of areas, and hopefully enough to make it stand out from the others. The idea behind the game is simple: deliver a game world of what goes on in the mind of a professional boarder. When regular people look at a bench they see a bench, but the pros like Shaun will see a grind, and the bench next to it means an opportunity. Sometimes they also like to dream, and that’s exactly what this game is about.

What we get to see is an urban area governed by the evil ministry, and this is portrayed by the grayscale world and boring suits sitting around. One of your first missions is the bring more life in the area, and this is achieved by grinding, flipping and grabbing all around the place. You land a successful stunt and boom, the area flourishes up, stores open, trees gain life and people start walking the streets. That’s not all, because the city is full of interactive spots - drawn in green - that allow you to reshape the area as you see fit. For example, a green rail will let you choose where it leads up to by just grinding that way, and this doesn’t necessarily mean horizontal. You can grind it up in the air to reach roofs and other areas that would otherwise be unreachable. Don’t like the result? Restart the grind, press the reset button and try over.

By the end of our 10-minute demo, the whole city was transformed into a skater-friendly zone with colourful graffiti art. Each level even contains one huge transformation that brings a lot of new skating opportunities. What we’re shown is a building that sort of turns inside out and leaves behind a fair amount of vertical ramps. This really takes me back to the atmosphere of the early Tony Hawk games where similar features were present.

Speaking of Tony Hawk, the thing that always bothered me was the control scheme where you had to force your fingers in impossible positions to perform your tricks. Same thing with skate. where it was just too difficult to be good at the game if you didn’t put a lot of time and energy into acing the controls. I asked one of the developers about it, and they assured us that the controls are simple to manage, but with various levels of difficulty available. No hassle to go forward, just press up on the analog stick and you’re off. More advanced skate.-like controls are available, but the difficulty is lower than competitive games. It’s about having fun, not wrenching your controller.

Multiple skaters will be available in the game, because the storyline actually involves rescuing Shaun who was kidnapped by the ministry. It was written by the creator of Family Guy, we’re assured that it is going to be crazy and funny. Throughout the game, you will also be able to unlock more outfits and items, so the skaters are pretty configurable. A multiplayer mode going to be present in the game, and it will allow all skaters to (re)shape the world at the same time. When a skater on a rail gets overtaken by another, that second player will take over control of the shaping ability. More modes, like a form of CTF for example, were also promised.

An impressive demonstration and a fresh take on the genre, if you ask me. Only too bad we weren’t allowed to try out the game ourselves and get a feeling of the control scheme. We’ll keep our eyes on this game, which is scheduled for a Q4 release.