Skate City

The skating mechanics are solid, and that's enough to make you keep skating over and over again. Skate City isn't looking to emulate the iconic Tony Hawk games with a three-dimensional open world designed to facilitate extreme stunts. Instead, it wants to provide a different kind of skateboarding experience, one with its own aesthetic and vibe, and it largely succeeds. Its artsy visual style -- muted colors and an almost hand-drawn look -- ought to appeal to the skater crowd, as will the simple but authentic clothes, hairstyles, and boards with which you can equip your skaters. The tricks are similarly faithful to the sport, the sort you'd see performed by talented amateurs at your local skate park, and are all the more gratifying because they're so real. This is a game meant to appeal to people who enjoy and appreciate the subtle beauty of skateboarding rather than non-skateboarders looking for outrageous stunts.

That said, there's a little room for improvement. Music is important to skaters, and the soundtrack is sadly bland and forgettable. And while the touch controls are blissfully simple and easy to understand, it's hard to achieve a mastery level of precision on a touch screen. It's better played with a controller, but most people are unlikely to have one handy while out and about, which is where they're most likely to play a game like this. These are far from deal-breaking issues, though. Skate City is perhaps the most Zen-like skating game currently available for mobile devices, and just the sort of experience that ought to satisfy people who love skating in the real world.