One of the first things you'll notice about the game is that it doesn't play, or look, like Activision's long-in-the-tooth Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series of games. There's less of a focus on massive combo stringing, complicated tricks, and the goal-defined level gameplay that Tony Hawk titles are known for.

With skate., the EA Black Box team has decided to focus on more fluid board control, greater realism and open-ended tasks. Players can choose to skate at their leisure around skate.'s photorealistic environments, mostly large public skate parks in the fictional city of San Vanelona, as well as take on tasks and challenges from other skaters and non-player characters populating the level. One such task was simply meeting a photographer's requirements: score 400 points and perform a rail slide from a heelflip. Fairly straightforward, but not altogether easy.

Why? The game's control scheme doesn't coddle you by using simple directional presses and button combinations. You'll have to work a little harder for those rail slides.

The controls are set up in a fashion familiar to anyone who's played an EA-published game (Fight Night Round 3, Def Jam ICON) recently. The left analog stick directs your player around the game world, the right stick controls your board. Using the trademarked "FlickIt" controls, a quick up-down motion with the right analog stick will kickflip your board. Move the analog stick in a J-motion, from top to down to left, and you'll pop shove-it. There are dozens of board moves that can be pulled off with simple gestures and they feel surprisingly effortless.

The rest of the controller is used for further body control. With the Xbox 360 controller, X and A perform left leg and right leg pushes, respectively, to gain speed. Right and left triggers will make your skater grab the board, depressing both will lay you down on the board for a coffin slide. Control feels natural, comfortable and refreshing in light of the white-knuckle button jamming you may be used to with Tony Hawk. What about the other buttons? B will act as a modifier for your tricks, with Y cycling through currently available tasks and challenges.

The skateboarding in skate. looks like mellow fun, and should give players an opportunity to cultivate their own style and suite of tricks.

One of the more interesting aspects of skate. is its planned use of the embedded video replay tool. The game will let players loop through the last 60 to 90 seconds of gameplay and record videos of memorable moments. Pull off an amazing set of tricks? Go into replay mode, edit out the fluff, pick your camera angles and save your video. EA will allow users to export these clips to your hard drive, then upload the fisheye lens-filtered videos to the skate. web site, letting other players rate and comment on your board skills. We were shown a preliminary version of the site, with movies uploaded on the fly, one that borrows heavily (and wisely) from YouTube.

The graphical style of skate. is gritty and realistic throughout, with real world brands like DC Shoes, Thrasher and Volcom driving home the realism. The HUD and overall design is rough and dirty, but thankfully features clear blue skies and realistic lighting. Expect in-game advertising to also add to the believability of the world. Graphically, the game looks fantastically realistic and you'll get a better impression of the visuals with the gallery below.

The most important aspect to nail with skate. has to be the controls. From my initial spins, the team seems to have done it. While more in-depth play will reveal just how usable the two stick control set up will be, it looks like they've got a worthy competitor to the Tony Hawk series of games. With the community aspect looking like a winner, skate. seems like it could be a solid new IP for Electronic Arts and may lure lapsed THPS players back the skateboarding genre. Michael McWhertor