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According to comments made to Edge by EA Montreal general manager Alain Tascan, you can expect more big action titles like Army of Two: The 40th Day from the studio. While previous Wii games, including Skate It, Boogie Superstar and the recently released Need for Speed: Nitro, have enjoyed acceptable levels of success, Tascan believes that targeting HD consoles with "fewer and bigger things" might yield improved results. It's a prudent approach, no doubt stemming from the publisher's recent layoffs.

Tascan explains that the Wii market is "a little bit unpredictable these days," further encouraging a shift to additional "big, blockbuster-type titles." We probably don't need Tascan to point out that Army of Two is "the most successful original IP EA has had in the last few years," since it's the first to get a big, blockbuster sequel ahead of Dead Space and -- can we dream? -- Mirror's Edge.

From big name releases like Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades to kids' games, at this point, the releases just aren't going to slow down. Everyone wants a piece of the holiday pie, even -- or perhaps especially -- in a flagging economy, but that just means a few agonizing decisions over what to buy. What will win for you this week?

• Bolt
• Cradle of Rome
• Guitar Hero: On Tour Decades
• Hello Kitty: Big City Dreams
• Imagine: Ballet Star
• Imagine: Movie Star
• Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine
• Luminous Arc 2
• Metal Slug 7
• Need for Speed Undercover
• Petz Catz Clan
• Petz Monkeyz House
• Petz Rescue: Endangered Paradise
• Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party
• Robocalypse
• Rune Factory 2
• Skate It
• Tecmo Bowl: Kickoff
• Tomb Raider Underworld
• Tony Hawk's Motion/Hue Pixel Painter
• Ultimate Band
• Winter Sports 2: The Next Challenge

Those looking to roll down the streets of San Vanelona and perform some flips, ollies and [error: skateboarding lexicon gap] via nontraditional controllers should be pleased to note the release date of EA's Skate It for Wii and DS. Both versions are slated to arrive on November 19th in North America and November 20th in Europe.

Skate It, which offers optional Balance Board control on the Wii, allows players to "make skate spots their own by moving objects like ramps, rails, and benches to fit their individual skating styles" and partake in several multiplayer challenges, including Best Trick and Best Line. There's also the ominous-sounding chance of "getting worked in Hall of Meat." Pennywise, are you in this after all?

We've taken two things away from this Skate It trailer: first, that EA is quite proud of their EA Trax. Second, that the choice to wreck San Vanelona for the game was an inspired one. The environments on display in this trailer are insane. Black Box has pulled off a bit of a magic trick here; because of all the rubble, the Skate It courses look kind of like they used to be a real city, but they can be laid out with skateboarding in mind.

Our opinion might change for the worse if there are too many mysteriously banked sections of road and random short lengths of railing in any one location.

These videos for Skate It -- today's and others -- beg one major question: how long is it going to be before people start busting their Balance Boards? A week after the game's fall release? A day? The one thing we're sure of is that it's going to happen. Boards will be busted. People will cry. But in the meantime, we're going to lean into lots of fun, and all without having to brave the prospect of introducing various body parts to the rough, hard asphalt.

IGN's Daemon Hatfield spent some time with EA's Skate It, playing with both the Wiimote control scheme and the more novel Balance Board-based scheme. Getting real (non-demo/tutorial) gameplay for the first time, Hatfield described the setup that motivates your character to find things and skate them.

The character Reda from Skate returns with a camera to document all your tricks, promising a shot at a skating career outside of the destroyed San Vanelona if you have the goods. To this end, the game contains "photo" and "film" challenges in which you must pull off specific tricks for the camera after finding a location appropriate for the prescribed chains of tricks. Other challenges specify the location as well. You can earn enough points in a challenge to "own it" or exceed that minimum to "kill it," which earns you more gear, game modes, and other bonuses.

Check out the new screens that IGN obtained along with this preview, as well as (obviously) a new trailer.

Ah, E3 ... a time for news, announcements, and, if you're Electronic Arts, old screenshots for DS games. How disappointed were we to discover nothing new for such games as MySims Kingdom. After all, our home counterpart got lots of new media. We feel so left out.

But the good news is, we've got some new Skate It images, as well as screens from Zubo and the Littlest Pet Shop. Talk about something for everyone!

Skate It


Zubo


Littlest Pet Shop

Our most cruel and unmerciful bosstypes over at Joystiq managed to try out EA's upcoming Wii port, Skate It. While they commented that the game does require a bit more concentration than your usual casual romp on the Wii, overall the whole thing was fairly easy to pull off. As you can see in the controls diagram below, it doesn't look easy. But, in action, it's more intuitive than you may think.

Be sure to head over to Joystiq and read the rest of their feet-on impression of Skate It.

What to do with the balance board now that you're totally fit? Well, you could ... skate it. We'll confess that stepping onto the yoga mat-turned-skateboard for the first time was intimidating. The original Skate taught us that even fake skaters have to practice their cool (and sent posers packing in the process) -- and that was just thumbs! Putting our body in the spotlight at a recent "feet-on" event that featured EA's Wii spin-off, Skate It, was another reminder that what looks easy on TV is just a carefully orchestrated illusion. Thankfully, our play session didn't end in a faceplant.

Aside from the eerie lack of people around, there's no indication in this Skate It gameplay footage of any cataclysmic event in San Vanelona. The parts of the city shown are intact, undamaged, and even nice and clean. Of course, when the city is full of benches, rails, and, uh, skate parks, there's plenty to do even without widespread destruction.

The action in this trailer seems pretty fast-paced and smooth, with one trick connecting into the next rather quickly. That means that you may be able to get a little bit of a workout from all the frantic Balance Board leaning!

Those of you waiting to step on the Balance Board and bust some kickflips with EA's port Skate It later this year, we've got a treat for you. Some fresh screens from the title have just hit our gallery below, joining the rest of our collection. In these new screens, you'll see the usual stuff: some dude is skating on stuff. Being big fans of skateboarding as a whole, as well as fans of Skate, which totally killed the Tony Hawk franchise in our eyes, you can bet we're pumped to try out this with the Balance Board.

The Wii and DS versions of Skate It ostensibly take place in the same fictional San Vanelona locale as the PS3/Xbox 360 game, but, as this video illustrates, the city is far from identical. "A series of freak disasters" -- apparently including alien attacks, lightning storms, and a monster -- has devastated the city's structures, causing all of the non-skater population to evacuate and turning the city into a wasteland of awesome ramps.

We think this is a brilliant move on the developers' part. It allows them to make any kind of wacky skating structure they want, as long as it kind of looks like it used to be a building or a bus or something, and it explains a lack of processor-taxing crowds. Apparently you'll get to move stuff around and customize the area, as well!

Nintendo Wii owners will get a chance to Skate It this fall, but EA hasn't forgotten that those with current-gen HD consoles are also ready for their own follow-up to the game that made the last Tony Hawk look like a turkey. Two new videos posted to the official Skate site -- "What happened to that Dude?" and "What happened to San Vanelona?" -- feature skaters talking up players' feats in the first game and about how the city has changed since then, before heading into some brief gameplay clips and a teaser logo for Skate 2 (above).

According to the skaters in the clips, five years have passed in the gameworld -- Skate's fictional city of San Vanelona -- and large corporations have spearheaded a big-time crackdown on skating. They talk of harsher punishment than mere tickets and how obstacles have been put in place near rails and other prime trick spots to discourage skaters. Still, the second clip shows a skater and his board perched defiantly atop a concrete block with a "No Skateboarding" sign affixed to it. So, skateboarding is a crime after all -- at least in Skate 2 -- and it looks like you'll be sticking it to the man (in this case, big business) a la Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure.

Our overlords at Joystiq recently got their hands on some titles Wii lovers care about, taking the time to write up their impressions as is their job. And, we'd be neglecting in our job if we didn't do our best to present you with anything and everything Wii-related out there on these great big internets. So, if you've yet to check out their coverage on these Wii titles, then be sure to hit up the links below.

• Sonic Unleashed impressions: all Sonic, no Unleashed
• Joystiq hands-on: Rock Revolution
• Platinum Games: MADWORLD eyes-on, first trailer and screens
• Joystiq hands-on: Skate It (Wii)

After reading Joystiq's hands-on write-up of Skate It for the Wii, we were thrown back by one particular comment: "Skate It's control is one of the best gameplay implementations of the Wiimote yet." Wow, what a statement!

We were all excited about Skate It, even more so when we found out it featured Balance Board support, but now we're even more pumped to try it ourselves. But, does it tout one of the best Wiimote control schemes yet? We'll have to wait and see, however, in the meantime, tell us what titles you think best utilize the Wii's wonderfully unique controls? We'll get you started with an easy one: Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure.