The APPera

Without taking credit away from Touchgrind, this next game is all about 3D skating as opposed to fingerboarding. How does this one stack up against console skate games?

Vans SK8 Pool Service ($4.99)

Fuel Industries in association with Vans presents their new game. The expectations are indeed high as they’ve put a tall order before themselves. Did they deliver:  one pool, two characters, more than a dozen multi touch tricks, songs, customizations and rich 3D graphics… hell yes! ^&$(#* Hell YES!

Vans Pool manages to both add depth to the iPhone’s skateboarding genre and fully abuse the console of it’s capacity. If you thought tricks with full 3D animations weren’t possible for the iPhone, you may want to reconsider that thought.

This Is What You Call Skating!

The trick of course for Fuel was to develop a game on a device that has no physical buttons? With the PS3 or 360, sure you have about a dozen of buttons you can play with but what do you without anything?

Vans Pool manages to get away with that using multiple screen swipe gestures on screen that can be combined to successfully execute tricks. Here is the full list of tricks you can do in game:

Here are a couple tricks we’ve performed:

Gameplay

There are two modes: Career and Free Ride. You can think of Free Ride as a practice pool where you can simply perform tricks to enhance your abilities. No score system or time limits, you are free to do what you want. Meanwhile, Career Mode offers about more than 10 events you can play:

You can select either of the two characters to play with: Bucky Lasek or Omar Hassan. You then need to play during Timed Run and perform all of the tricks listed above to be able to unlock all events.

The game comes with a handy Achievements page in which you can preview which 3 tricks you need to perform to unlock an event:

Here’s a shot out of the Pool Cleaner event where you’re asked to pick up little trash bags around the pool and earn a certain number of points to be a champ for that event (note the little trophy on our Training Mode!):

Customization

If you score great enough on the events, Vans Pool opens up its deck and wheels armory:

When we met with Fuel Industries at GDC last week, the wheels and decks are currently not graded/ranked performance and skill wise, but it is certainly on their to do list for updates.

Conclusion

Overall, we can’t suggest Vans Pool enough seeing we thouroughly enjoyed Touchgrind. If you thought Touchgrind might have been a little easier for you and a little less in-depth, definitely check out Vans. You’ll find exactly what you’re looking for.

Please don’t mind the 1 star reviews on the store. They’re somewhat fishy and doesn’t explain enough what exactly they do not like about the game.

We suggest Fuel to concentrate on wheels/deck grading more so than adding different pool locations. The game is fun as it is. Sure, we could have a couple more pools, but a tweak in gameplay (i.e. deck grading) is much more fitting at this point.

Here are a couple more screenshots to possibly sway you into getting Vans:

Related posts:

1. It’s A Very Lite World: Vans Skate + Knights Onrush Lites Out!
2. Touchgrind: Duuude Skate For The iPhone!
3. Skater Nation Review: Tony Hawk Would Be So Proud!
4. Anytime Pool Review: Pick And Play Anytime
5. WWDC 2009: Lifeboat. Their Hearts Go On!