Fine game though it was, Skate did a rather cruel thing. It held out the promise of exploring a sprawling city, but then fixed you to four small wheels easily thwarted by stairwells and steep inclines. Skate 2, blessedly, allows you to step off your skateboard – you can even leave it behind – allowing you to clamber all over the city of New San Vanelona.

However, conquering a flight of steps isn’t the only reason to get off your board. This time you are able to grab nearly every object that isn’t nailed down and tug it around, constructing new lines and obstacle courses out of piled-up park benches, skips and bins. The AI skaters who populate the city are suitably smarter, recognising and avoiding obstructions, or incorporating them into their own tricks.

Your own repertoire of moves has been doubled, but doesn’t feel bloated; Black Box has left itself room to expand, now combining Skate’s existing intuitive controls to create even more variety. The decision to include the mongo push may have seemed superfluous in Skate, but it has evolved in the sequel, since each foot button now works separately in the middle of a move, allowing you to perform hand-plants while waggling your feet in the air. Hit both buttons midollie as you approach a hurdle and your skater will leap over it as the board goes skittering beneath.

Recognising that a brutal face-plant was as satisfying as any other move in the game, Black Box has turned the Hall of Meat into a Pain-style game mode, rewarding players for wiping out in the most wince-inducing ways. This mode is the game’s only sign of silly-but-fun excess. Elsewhere, Skate 2 is a matter of sensible iteration, polish and minor revision – a fittingly modest advancement for a franchise that excels at coolly understated simulation.