Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Tony Hawk's American SK8land, and DS online

Yes, it is called that.

I bought this from Game to assess two things: firstly whether I should put it on my Christmas list, and secondly to check whether my router works with Nintendo's WiFi stuff.

Firstly, the good news. This is a superb game, and I almost don't want to put it on my Christmas list because that means I won't be able to play it until then. I've already played it far too much, unlocking three areas in the story mode and one in the classic mode. It controls well, it's graphically really clear and stylish, and the levels are almost perfectly designed. I used to really enjoy playing Tony Hawk's Skatebourding on my Dreamcast, and this really is 100% better than that. I can't wait for Christmas now.

And apparently the multiplayer's really good. I say apparently, since my router seems to be incompatible with the DS. The DS just can't see the network at all - it can see my neighbour's network, but he's got that encrypted so that's not a lot of good. I've done a lot of research and it seems that this is due to the router's firmware - an issue which has been resolved by D-Link in Australia, but that firmware's not available to us in the UK yet.

Some people have got the Australian firmware running on their router - see here - but it's a bit risky and I can't do without a net connection for the next couple of weeks for various reasons. After that, it's fair game ... but hopefully D-Link UK will release new firmware. Thay've had enough people phoning up tech support about it by now, I'm sure ...

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