A great addition to a long-running series of great games...
At this point, people know exactly what to expect from a Tony Hawk game and this game delivers exactly that without any significant technical issues and a few new bells and whistles thrown in to spice things up a bit. I understand, Mr. Gerstman, that you're a joyless, jaded, sarcastic "professional game reviewer" who has probably been sick of reviewing the games in this series for a while and clearly has an axe to grind (One look at the video review proves that beyond a doubt.) but I call BS on you and encourage any fans of past Tony Hawk games to give this one a try.
Having said that, I don't believe that this game is a good choice for newcomers to the series. It makes a lot of assumptions about a player's familiarity with techniques covered more extensively in past games and also assumes a level of proficiency with the control scheme that would only be possessed by those who have either mastered the controls in a previous Tony Hawk game or are willing to take the time to do so in this one.
I think fans of the Tony Hawk series will most-likely rate this game between an 8.0 and a 9.0 after playing it, depending on how much they enjoy some of the changes to the formula and what they're looking for from the game in general, but I cannot imagine any fan of this series giving THPG anything less than a 7.0 in the context of Gamespot's rating system. 6.5? I think not.