Skateboarding is a fun sport - and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 lets anyone master the cool moves and spins from the comfort of your couch.

Let's start with the huge amount of customization available. You create your character, male or female, giving him a name, home town, age. You then can choose his hair style and color, shirt, pants, shoes, hat, logos, tattoos on ALL parts of the body.

For each item (say a shirt) there is a HUGE range of styles, colors and logos available. You can even tweak the various body parts to make them bigger or smaller! I was extremely impressed with how well you could really customize your player.

Next, there's a full skateboard park creator. You can build your fantasy park with ramps, benches, stairs and much more in it. Then you can have fun cutting loose! There are many sample parks included to play on or to draw inspiration from.

Now, on to the game. There's a Career mode that lets you move through a series of levels, accomplishing tasks on each one. You start out on the college level, zooming around, avoiding the cars on the streets or grabbing on to them for a ride. There are people hanging out around the college to talk to. One wants you to rip down signs promoting the local cop. Another wants you to search for letters. A third wants you to harass the frat boys that are causing trouble. There are a bunch of different missions, each one different, each one helping you to learn a different aspect of gameplay.

You can play single missions to, or against friends if you wish. It can be a bit tricky at first to get the hang of skateboarding, just like in real life. You tend to land sideways and go SPLAT on the pavement, little blood drops flying (you can turn off gore if you wish). But soon you get the hang of it and are doing cool tricks off the railings and walls you come across.

The levels are well laid out and very interesting, with fun scenery to interact with. The various challenges test different parts of your skills and help you learn new ones as you go. The soundtrack is great, with a wide selection of bands. You can turn on and off different songs if some don't appeal to you.

Highly recommended for sports fans!

Buy Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 from Amazon.com