Tony Hawk Underground, Free skate! Options

[unitself]

Since Claymore's thread was about SSX, I decided to move this into it's own thread.
So, whatcha think, fellow skaters? So far, after about two hours of play, I find it pretty fun. The areas are a bit cramped though. I bet that'll fix itself after I get better though. Maybe i am just used to the larger worlds of the previous games also.
I can already tell that I am going to be in way over my head on having to remember which button combo does what. Not to mention the rarely used (for me) button for getting off of your board. On the Xbox, it's the black button.
So... thoughts?

[unitself]

I too am playing it on Normal mode. It took me like 15 tries to get enough speed to jump the bridge. Now I can't do the very first challenge. My grinding skills sux.
Being the impatient gamer that I am, I rarely read the manual before playing... like most of you I am sure. So, I never new about the various ways to raise your stats. I would just skate around and pull some trick and then BAM the screen would say Stats Increased. I just found the menu last night which told me all of the things I have to do to improve my stats. So, that's what I have been working on.
I still can't grind worth a crap though. I can pull of small ones, but five seconds... not yet.
I found that the more I play, the more I like this game. It seemed that my neighborhhod was really small at first. Then after exploring a bit last night, I found some cool areas. I even found the secret tape!