Looking back on my Tony Hawk's American Wasteland review for the Xbox 360, I still think it's a strong entry in the series. But the game is hardly the equivalent of a next-gen Tony Hawk experience. It's a finely tuned port of the other current-gen versions on the market, but the key word there is port. Nothing was changed to make it feel like a tried and true Xbox 360 game, aside from a few Achievements. Fortunately, Neversoft has come to the realization that fans want a real next-gen skateboarding game, and have since been putting work into Tony Hawk's Project 8, which is due for the PS3 and Xbox 360 next month. Luckily, we were able to get our hands on both builds to see how the game was shaping up, and there's a big surprise that may just change everything. Today we'll take a close look at the PS3 edition.

The big surprise comes in the form of a new feature called Nail the Trick. The Tony Hawk series is known for presenting a vast scale of moves and tricks and being able to chain together combos for 1,000,000+ point scores, but this is a little different. With this new feature, you actually feel like you're controlling your skateboarder through his or her own trick invention, instead of pulling off something that's automatically been pre-programmed into the controller.

You begin by going off a ramp or off surface in order to get into the air. Once you're off the ground, you can press in both analog sticks, activating the Nail the Trick mode. From here, the camera zooms in on your skateboarder's feet, time slows down, and the magic begins. Both of the analog sticks, still pressed in, control each of the individual feet of this boarder. From here, you can twirl around the skateboard into a number of motions, such as a kick flip or a spin. But the trick can go any different way, depending on your timing. Blow the timing and the game speeds right back along as you come crashing down to Earth. Get the timing right, however, and you can continue to kick the board around as you please, customizing your trick and building phenomenal point value.

Most of the time, going off any certain jump can activate Nail the Trick. There are points in the game, like in the training level, where it proceeds automatically. It's a huge new part of the game, and the way it's pulled off shows tremendous promise. You've seen the trailers where skateboarding feet do some stuff you thought was never possible, right? You have the opportunity to create tricks of that same magnitude with a little creativity and know-how. The detail is uncanny, and the fact that the whole game slows down just to pay attention to this and let you become a master of it is a nice touch.