This Christmas I have mostly been playing...

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground.

And you know what? It's without a doubt the best Tony Hawk game since THPS 3. Underground and Wasteland kinda lost their way quite a bit but this one is just superb. The best part is you can do a nail the trick at any point, even during a normal ollie. The maps are good fun and have some shit long grinds. You lvl up a little like an rpg where you just get better at something the more you do it, which is the way it should be.

I hate to use the tired old cliché of 'If you like x, you'll love y' but if you used to enjoy the old Tony Hawk games before they got into all that cycling and parkour bollocks. Everything they've introduced into Proving Ground actually makes the game better rather than worse, it feels like they're refining it rather than adding new stuff for the sake of it.

And if you've never done them before, Nail the Trick/Grab/Manual are really, really well done and totally fantastic when you pull off a particularly difficult one.

If you're looking for something good to play after the usual Christmas release-date hiatus then i would highly recommend Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. Doubly so if you used to like it but went off it in the later years then this is definitely the game to pull you back.