An alternative take on skating to contrast with the arcadey Tony Hawk series, Thrasher was a game I ended up enjoying for brief moments. There's one thing that really makes this game stand out compared to THPS - fleeing. I grew up in a city that didn't have skate-friendly architecture or parks at all. Skating wasn't really a subculture here, really. Bikes were the big hitter. Thrasher and THPS allowed me to pretend I was part of a world I'd see on television a lot which was nice enough, but unlike THPS, Thrasher showed the risk of it. The allure of being where you shouldn't be, doing what you shouldn't do? That was interesting, and it was even more interesting that there were consequences for it.

Unfortunately the rest of the game isn't quite as good. The feel of it is comparable to GTA3, oddly enough, but the actual gameplay is quite sluggish and hard to get a grip of.

I saw the most recent review by largebagofrocks, where they wrote "It gets closer to imitating the experience of IRL street skating by putting you into a similar frame of mind that figuring to how to skate a spot asks of you" and that got me thinking of a glorious cross between Mirror's Edge and Tony Hawk.

Somebody, make that a reality. I'd buy it.