Touchgrind is available for the iPhone and iPad where you take the role of a virtual tach deck which I'm sure nearly all of you have done physically before. I had a couple in a pencil case at primary school and got pretty good at performing tricks with it. But it's been such a long time since I have used one I have no idea whether Touchgrind is truly realistic. But who cares it's awesome fun!
The version I'm reviewing is specifically the one made for the iPad 'Touchgrind HD'. As you'd imagine this is upscaled from the iPhone version so you see a much wider view of skate parks and surroundings but the skateboard size stays the same so it's not like your going to have to relearn what you've done on the iPhone version if you have already played that version, if anytime it makes it a lot easier to play.
Three main modes are infused. The first being free style where you just play around with your board but you can’t rack up any points. The next mode is Jam Session which is where you skate without any time limit but your score only increases if you pull of tricks worth more than the last. The final and main mode is competition where by you have a set time limit of about two minutes to perform the highest score possible. The higher your score the more boards you unlock which helps you perform even better and this score is in literal competition with the world via Game Center. All modes are a blast to play and performing tricks gets easier and easier as you go through. Kick flips to rail slides to an ollie are all easy and with all the buckets of tricks you learn, they help provide you with big scores so you can begin to exploit them and pull of awesome combos using various obstacles such as ramps and rails which are the real big scorers. The more impressive your tricks become Touchgrind will reward you with trick scores performed at that time doubling to quadrupling and it can go ever further. But if you fail to land correctly this perk just completely disappears.
The controls are really easy to get the hang of. You have precision control of the board so to perform basic skating you have have one finger on the board which should be your finger next to your index and then you will use the index to swipe beside your board which will create speed. So your emulating your feet in effect. Flips are performed by swiping a finger along the side of the board and a a basic ollie is performed by having two fingers on the board and lifting the front one just before the rear. All this is dependant on the speed of which you do it and that of course effects the speed of the trick in question. The controls were very solid indeed and were a lot more suited to the 9.7 inch screen.
Graphically this reminded me of Mirros Edge for some reason, I think it's due to the color scheme and textures but never the less everything is sharp. The surrounding and boards are crisp and realistic too. The shadow under the board is also really well done.
Sound effects are exactly as you'd expect. When the board goes onto different surfaces the sound reflects that with hollow ramps and solid stone. I really like the sound effects with tricks, it just makes it more satisfying. You can also play your iPod music in the background.
Overall Touchgrind HD is definitely a better version of the game. It's just more enjoyable to play with the bigger screen of the iPad. It's one of those Apps which your just going to pop in and out of time to time to get a bigger score and to have some fun. I'd recommend it to all iPad owners.
