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Tony Hawk’s Project 8

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Never before have I had so much difficulty deciding if I like a game or not. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Tony Hawk franchise, and Project 8 is one of the best Tony Hawk games in a while. But the problem I have is that even with the new skate tricks, the new completely open world, the new graphics engine that makes things look prettier than ever is that it still feels just like every other Tony Hawk game.

On the one hand, this is good – the Tony Hawk games have always been great at creating a skating simulation yet I still feel there needs to be something more in the game to keep me interested long-term.

The story in Project 8 is a little light, but serves its purpose. Tony Hawk is in town, and is seeking the top 8 skaters for his competition. You begin ranked at 200, and have to work your way up the rankings by skating and tricking around the city. The city isn’t a real location, but rather an ‘Anytown USA’ type amalgamation of previous locations found in the series. The city is huge, and although certain areas are locked at first, once it’s opened up is completely skateable. If you’re good enough, you could grind around the entire area, from the starting point, a white washed and picket fenced suburb, to the capital district complete with faux capital building and beyond, to a hardcore industrial SUV factory.

To help you achieve ranking are the various pro skaters and celebrities who direct you to perform in skate shows, as well as try to achieve different activities around the city. This time around instead of choosing which level of difficulty you’ve going to try to attempt activities there are Spot Challenges. With these it’s all up to how well you perform the moves. For example, there’s a task early on which requires you to natas spin on a number of poles. Get a certain number of poles, linking them with manuals, and you’ll get an Amateur ranking. Spin on a few more, and you’ll get Pro. Tricks are conveniently marked too, so grinding lines have graffiti spots telling you how far to grind before you’re awarded with Amateur, Pro or Sick. It allows a much better flow to the game, and you can re-try tricks to get better scores and thus a better story ranking.

Each Tony Hawk game introduces a new feature, and the new ‘Nail the Trick’ mode is especially cool. At any time, you can click the controller joysticks and you’ll go into a bullet time slow motion, with the camera zooming in and the joysticks becoming your feet. Moving the joysticks will flip or rotate the board, and you can do any number of awesome moves. It’s tricky, as you have to get used to a whole new timing mini-game, moving the sticks back to their original position at precisely the right moment, or you’ll bail in spectacular fashion.

But now even bailing is fun. If you stack it, you can bail out and cause massive damage to yourself, racking up a hospital bill and breaking bones. Pressing Y bounces you along and whilst only having minor impact on the overall game, it’s still fun bouncing along racking up points for failing to being able to pull off moves. Whilst the hospital bills are weighed in Stokens, the in-game currency, money doesn’t play any role except to tell you how gnarly you are.. Stokens are gained by impressing the locals in the area with tricks, as well as knocking people over and stealing from them. But if you don’t skate away quickly enough, they come after you and knock you off the board, stealing all your hard earned cash.

One of the biggest changes to the game is the updated graphics. Finally here is a Tony Hawk game for the Xbox 360. The graphics are great, and although the character models sometimes look a little off, it’s probably more to do with the Uncanny Valley effect than something wrong with the graphics themselves. When you go into “Nail the Trick’ mode, in the slow motion you can see the wheels of the board spin independently as you flip and manipulate the board. Moreover, the board is completely separate from the skater – not that the game ever felt like you were riding with your feet nailed to a plank, but it gives you a better sense of freedom from the board now as it is a completely independent entity.

Tony Hawk games have always had awesome soundtracks, and this one is no different. Featuring Australia’s own Wolfmother, punk like The Ramones and Sonic Youth, to rockers like NIN and Ministry, to hiphop from Ugly Duckling and Hieroglyphics, plus a few oddities like Gnarls Barkley and Toots & the Maytals. But on top of that the sound engine has been totally reworked. You can actually hear the wheels spinning independently on their ball bearings. You can hear the wheels clacking over the joins in the ramps. And you immediately notice when the surface underneath your feet changes through the tone and pitch of the board.

Even with all the new stuff packed into the game, I have to admit that maybe I’ve had enough of the Tony Hawk games. Which is a really hard thing for me to admit, and I’m sure that Tony Hawk fans will lynch me for saying so but I found myself getting bored really early on in the game, and simply didn’t feel that addictiveness that is often found in the series. I guess it’s partly the fact the series has been so damn good at representing skating in computer game form. But I just felt I was doing the same thing over and over, and although the difficulty was ramped up, I never felt the pay off was worth the effort.

Whilst most of the time the game played smoother than the proverbial, there were a few times where I encountered some really odd bugs and framerate drops. Once I was grinding along the edge of a locked area, and all of a sudden I was shot high into the air, just floating in space. Another time I was getting air and did a flip, and the flip animation bugged out, so I was caught in a continuous loop for about 3 seconds. And sometimes, especially when you do a spine transfer from a ramp into a wall, you can find yourself stuck, and you go back and forth hitting the back of the ramp and front of the wall.

Online is the game’s biggest let down. There’s only one new mode called “walls” which is like the light cycles in Tron – as you move a wall is formed behind you. Hit another player’s wall, and you are out of the game. Unlike Tron though, you can hit your own walls without penalty, so it’s much less of a challenge. The other modes are trick attack, score challenge, combo mambo, graffiti, and horse. There are a heap of online leaderboards and achievements, but I’m not someone who is really all that competitive, and would like something more than the usual lists of ultimately useless numbers.

Conclusion:
Not being a skater this series has allowed me to live out my fantasies of being a hella cool skater thrashing and grinding and getting wicked air. And Project 8 takes it to a whole new level of authenticity. You can hear the different pitch and wail and see the wheels rotating independently when you go into the air during “Nail the Trick”. But even with all the new bells and whistles, I was left feeling Project 8 needed something different, something more. Truth be told, I became bored with the game rather quickly, and being the fan of the series I am, this rather disappointed me. I’m not entirely sure what is needed, but the series definitely needs something more to get me to excited about the next one.

Pros
spot challenges allow a continuous feel to the game
‘nail the trick’ is really awesome
excellent new graphics engine
superb use of sound

Cons
the multiplayer modes offer nothing new
the entire game can feel repetitive
a little buggy at times when doing tricks

80/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Call of Duty Black Ops II

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The annual release of Call of Duty rolls around again, and to try and make things fresh we find ourselves battling terrorists in the near future, as well as the immediate past cold war era. We return to Alex Mason, the hero of the first Black Ops, and journey through the creation of the story’s main enemy, Raul Menendez, the leader of Cordis Die, a hacktivist organisation with sinister motives. We battle through Africa, Afghanistan, and Panama. Then, as David Mason, Alex’s son, we battle in the near future through Burma, Pakistan and the Cayman Islands, Yemen and Haiti. Oh, and also on the huge USS Obama. All in all, it’s just another gun boner shooter with a typically boring and trite “America Fuck Yeah” storyline to go along with it.

The gameplay isn’t anything new – single player still spends half its time taking control away from the player in a desperate attempt to make everything seem action packed and cinematic. I just find it tedious and annoying. Yes, I realise this is fundamental to the Call of Duty games, but it doesn’t mean I like it. Treyarch have tried some things differently, like giving you control of the bad guy on occasion, and also offering branching storylines based on players actions. I like the idea, but not the execution. Simply put, branching doesn’t have much impact on the gameplay, just the story, which is baloney and simply not engaging enough to care about.

Another new feature of single player is Strike Missions. These maps are small, almost tower defence like battlegrounds. Taking control of troops, drones and turrets, you have to secure areas by stopping invading forces or taking control of various areas on the map. These missions also impact which ending type you get, and can’t be replayed if you fail them too many times. At first, I tried to play these like a tower defence game, placing forces at various choke points and so on, but doing this is guaranteed failure. The AI is simply terrible and although appearing as a strategy based game with overhead tactical map and hotswapping characters, it’s better to simply zoom out and take control of the various troops and run and gun around the maps.

Of course, single player isn’t why people buy COD games, and I’m glad to say even though there are no huge changes in the way you play multiplayer, it’s still a damn lot of fun. There is a plethora of modes to play from the traditional death match to team death match and capture the objective / king of the hill modes. There’s a new multi-group capture objective mode, which amps up the action by including more teams to complete against, making the already hectic action seriously adrenalin pumping.

The killstreak rewards have been altered to allow players like myself to unlock more rewards. I never used to get rewards because I’m not very good at killing – my ratio generally sits at 3 deaths for every kill. However, I am really good at defending and taking objectives and Treyarch have refined the allocation system to help players like me and those that work well in teams to actually win rewards. To be honest, it works, as I don’t think I’ve played multiplayer more in any other game this year.

Zombies also make a return – after all, there’s no point cutting modes when it’s easy as having endless waves of zombies attack you, but it seems out of place. There’s a single player campaign, but I just couldn’t get into it. I guess I have zombie fatigue and I don’t think I’m alone as you can have up to 8 player zombie multiplayer, but no one ever seemed to be playing these maps.


Conclusion:
The problem with COD:BO:II is obviously it will be compared to not only all the previous Call of Duty titles, but Halo 4, Battlefield 2, and Far Cry 3; and to put it bluntly, it’s not as good as any of them. This is not to say it’s a bad game, it’s just not different enough from previous Call of Duty titles. The story isn’t memorable, the maps and weapons aren’t any different to what we’ve previously experienced, the gameplay is near identical to previous games, and when it’s not identical it falls flat and fails to impress.

Multiplayer is where the series has always shined, and with Black Ops II multiplayer shines brightest – it’s almost the sole reason I’ve given it the score I have. It’s fast, furious and fun, with enough different modes to keep most people happy. The change in reward structure will disappoint some players, but entices cooperation and team play amongst others, and attracts those who usually get bored of being pwned by people with a lot more time to play.

Pros:
Excellent multiplayer
A plethora of multiplayer modes & rewards
Branching story ideas are good for those into the story
Strike Missions are interesting idea..

Cons:
Boring story which is badly written and overly trite
Branching doesn’t impact gameplay
Strike missions could have been a lot better in implementation
Zombie mode is boring

80/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Blur

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Bizarre Creations’ Blur is one of those games so simple in its premise you wonder why it hasn’t been done sooner. It’s best described as Project Gotham Racer meets Mario Cart, and takes the best things of all those games and shoves it in one neat little package.

Like Project Gotham Racing, Blur has “real world” locations such as San Francisco, Tokyo, and Barcelona, with fake tracks in each of those cities. The cities look vibrant and real, full of neon lights and flowing banners and glass towers and trees and dirt on the off-road tracks. Also similar to PGR, it has fantastic looking licensed cars from Ferrari, Lotus, Ford, Volkswagon, Landrover and more. As you zoom about the race tracks, you take damage from other racers and crashing into walls and such, and the more you get hit and smashed, the more damaged your car looks. But that’s where the realism stops and the fun starts.

The object of single player is nothing new to racing game enthusiasts. Race to win and collect “lights” for first, second and third place. The more lights you have, the more events you unlock in each division. Each division is owned by a particular racer with a particular car and mod, but more on that in a moment.

There are also bonus lights to pick up via two means – Fan Runs and Fan Targets. Driving through a gate icon found on every track opens up the Fan Runs where you must race through slalom style to get more fans. Fans are otherwise rewarded for clever driving and using pickups on other racers. Fan Targets are how many fans you must win to unlock a light. Fans are the currency of Blur, and by winning fans you unlock different cars and mods. It’s similar to Kudos found in PGR. As you do certain manoeuvres, you’re rewarded points. However, unlike PGR there is more to it than simply slick driving.

Like Mario Cart, there are pickups on the track at various locations. These come in the form of offensive and defensive, and cause all kinds of mayhem when racing about. The offensive pickups come in the form of mine, barge, shunt, bolt, and shock. Mines can be shot forward or backwards, and remain on the track until someone hits them with their car or another weapon. Barge pushes the cars around you away from you. Shunt is a homing beacon, which whirls into the car targeted in front of you, ala the red shell in Mario Cart. Bolt is like the green shell, a “dumb” forward or reverse firing missile which is devastating if you manage to get 3 hits in a row with it. Shock shoots columns of lightning into the front runners path, causing mass destruction. Defence involves shield, repair and nitro. Shield protects your car from other effects. Repair repairs damage, and nitro boosts you at speed.

However, to view the pickups so simplistically won’t win you many fans. All pickups can be used offensively or defensively in the right situation. Use shield and nitro to ram into other cars. Fire nitro forward to “air break”, allowing you to avoid collisions and then speed out of danger. Deploy mines, barge and bolts to destroy shunts and mines. Your score will rise even higher due to the fan multiplier when you’re driving well and use the pickups in combination, such as drifting around corners and bolting cars. There are also Fan Favourites, which give you a time limit to perform a certain manoeuvre such as nitro slam another car, or drift well around a corner.

There are nine different divisions in single player, and to be eligible to race the owner of the division in a One on One Race to own their car, you have to do more than just race. For example, in the Fan Favourite division you must complete 5 Fan Demands, Complete 2 Fan Runs, Complete 4 Fan Targets and Win Event 5 with one x5 Fan Combo. Once you defeat them, you unlock their car and their mod. Mods do a range of things, such as increase the number of bolts you can fire, and armour plating.

There are 3 varieties of races other than One on One – Checkpoint, Race, and Destruction. Checkpoint is a timed race, with stopwatch and nitro pickups only. Race is a regular blur race against 10 or 20 other cars, whilst Destruction arms you with bolts only and places cars in front of you to destroy. Each car destroyed add more time to your race. Whilst on paper this seems like not a lot of variety, the fast paced nature of the game means you never get bored.

Single player, whist quite difficult and a little shallow compared to other racing games, is still loads of fun. Bizarre Creations have recognised this to some extent, and allowed the creation of challenges between friends. Just amassed an enormous amount of fans? Set up a Nemesis on the leaderboard and challenge your friends to beat you. Got all the lights on expert? Send a message to facebook or twitter to brag about it. It seems worthless at first, but seeing your friends beat your hard work with what appears to be ease spurs even the least competitive person to try the race again, and this simple yet effective method of creating depth has worked.

But even so, racing multiplayer is where the game truly shines. Four player split screen will fill a room with the same laughter and entertainment as Mario Cart once did, and even the best driver can be taken down by a well placed mine right on the finishing line, meaning it’s accessible to everyone.

In Online Multiplayer there are different race modes, including racing with no mods which is rather boring to be honest; Team Racing which makes the game feel like Midtown Madness but with power ups; to a smash up derby arena fight which is quite possibly the best thing since Destruction Derby on the original Playstation. Furthermore, Fans and Mods are slightly different. Taking a leaf out of Modern Warfare’s book, Fans act as experience points and Mods act as outfits. As per single player fans unlock cars and events as you go up fan levels, but you’re only racing for fans, not lights.

Mods are different from single player as there are more of them and they have more effects, such as converting shield hits to power ups, and causing mines to explode into 4 mini mines, and defensive stuff like make your car harder to home in on. You can assign 3 mods to a car, and you have 4 mod groups to customise and apply to your car, so like the weapon kits in MW you can find the mods which suit your play style best.

There are also car and rank challenges, again which improve your car and are rewarded by playing the game online. This adds enormous depth to the multiplayer game, especially in team games where users will complement each other with some equipping their cars to win the race, and others equipping to take battle to the other team.

Conclusion:
The fun of Blur is unparalleled in any other driving game. It could have been simply Mario Cart in real looking cars, but Bizarre Creations have looked hard at what is fun about racing games, what is fun about competitive play, what is fun about online gaming, and worked out how to get all of that in one game and more importantly, get it to work well and remain fun.

Pros:
Looks awesome
Simple yet fantastic take on a motor racing game
Incredibly fun to play split screen
Quite some depth to the multiplayer
Cool use of social networking tools

Cons:
Single player is quite difficult
Can’t race split screen online

90/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Call Of Duty: World At War

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The Call Of Duty franchise has always been one of the better shooter franchises, but Infinity Ward, with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, trumped all the other COD games by setting the game in modern times, and putting some killer scripted events in amongst the frantic and intense shooting. Not only that, it had one of the greatest online game components of any game, rivalling the Halo franchise for online fun.

When it was announced Treyarch, responsible for the competent but average Call of Duty 2: The Big Red One and Call of Duty 3, were bringing the franchise back to World War II, there was some consternation about the series. After all, World War II been the setting of more games than any other conflict, and there were big questions as to whether Treyarch could do the series justice.

The answer to that is “sort of”. Call of Duty: World At War is a great game, as nearly as good as Modern Warfare, but what you will get out of the game really depends on what you’re looking for. For someone really hankering to get a gritty World War II shooter with scripted events and good online play, then COD:WAW is perfect. But in my experience, playing the game felt like playing COD4 with a lick of paint, a mere expansion, than playing a new experience.

COD: WAW focuses on the Pacific and Russian fronts, two little explored areas of WWII by video games. These fronts were brutal and savage, and the game reflects the loading screens with footage not usually associated with WWII videogames. I found it to be an interesting experience – on the one hand the game was demonstrating the horrors of war, yet on the other hand it gave you a flamethrower that never exploded nor ran out of fuel (although it would overheat), and was incredibly fun to use on enemy troops, especially as they danced around on fire much like in Loonytoon cartoons.

That aside, the campaign is just as intense and fun as its predecessor. The scripted moments are just as intense as in COD4. The “on rails” section in the seaplane, jumping from gun to gun shooting Japanese boats and Zeros is fabulous fun, and the Russian tank kicking the crap out of the Germans section is incredibly satisfying. However, the story doesn’t feel as well put together as the previous title. The two fronts are so far apart from one another there’s less of a connection between them, and moreover you know who’s going to win, so it takes a little away from the whole experience. The campaign seemed short and relatively easy, which was a criticism of COD4 as well, but it is obvious single player is not really the focus of the franchise any more.

The campaign can be played multiplayer, with four friends battling through many of the maps together. There are some which aren’t available – it doesn’t seem right to have a mission with four snipers after all – but it allows you to approach the missions with a new perspective. Much like Halo 3, there’s cards you can pick up which alter the experience of playing, again making the campaign more fun a second or third time through.

The multiplayer is also just as fun as COD4. You can create classes and level up in much the same way, unlocking perks and weapons the more you play. The perks have been jigged a little to fit the times, however, with camouflage replacing UAV Jammer, but doing the exact same thing. The weapons feel a little imprecise compared to their COD4 counterparts, but that’s to be expected, as WWII weapons aren’t as good as those of modern warfare. Artillery and “spotter planes” (radar) make a return, and now you have attack dogs which tear around the map hunting the enemy.

The maps are set up similarly to COD4, being a mix of open and close quarters fighting, although there are a couple which include vehicles which add a nice dimension to play. In addition to the new, err, old WWII weapons, there are some unique weapons such as the aforementioned flamethrower, “bouncing betty” bomb and Molotov cocktails. There’s also the Nazi Zombie mode, unlocked after completing the main campaign mode, which is a survival mode against the shambling horde. It’s fun, but it’s not a patch on Left 4 Dead.

I must admit, the graphics didn’t really grab me. It looks “next gen” enough, and the pacific areas are quite lush and full of jungle foliage, but it just felt like playing every other WWII game when it really came down to it. Drab greens, browns and greys dominated the game, with a splash of Nazi red and fire here and there. Although I get the whole reality / grittiness of the graphics, I think it’s just a little overdone and wish people would think a little deeper about colour palettes. Sound, on the other hand, plays an incredible part in the game, and during the final battle for the Reichstag I was literally in awe of the sounds all around me, and it added immensely to one of the more powerful experiences of the game.

Conclusion:
Whilst it is obvious Treyarch put a lot of sweat and love into the game, Call Of Duty: World At War just doesn’t stand out as much as it’s predecessor. I’ve played scores of WWII games, and even with the slightly different story campaign settings and grittier overall feel, COD: WAW never felt much different from playing any other WWII game, nor even much different to playing COD4. It is a good World War II shooter, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but I feel it doesn’t have enough of its own identity to really win me over from playing COD4.

Pros:
Uses the COD4 engine to great effect
Great online play bot h competitive and cooperative
Nazi Zombies!

Cons:
Feels like every other WWII shooter
Short and easy single player campaign.

85/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland

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Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland (simply THAW from now on) sees the series return to the more recognisable pastures of the Tony Hawk series. Gone is the MTV inspired craziness of THUG2 (XBW: 82). Gone are the vehicles of THUG (XBW: 88). And in its place we have a few more new moves, BMX biking ala Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX, and whilst all elements of the entire series are still retained, the biggest addition for Xbox gamers is Xbox Live! online play.


The series has always been known for it’s great presentation, but this time it’s been upped a notch by the inclusion of art by famous Santa Cruz artist Jimbo Philips. The name might not be familiar to those who live their lives on the Xbox, but those of us with even a passing interest in skating, surfing and the associated scene will be very familiar with Jimbo’s wacky designs and intense yet funny artwork. Jimbo’s art shows up in cut scenes, and the cut scenes tell the story of a young country boy (you) who makes his way to LA to make it big on the skate circuit. Once he arrives, he’s robbed by some skate thugs, but befriended by punk chick Mindy, who helps him get his stuff back. In return, the skater boy promises to help Mindy get her skate ‘zine ‘American Wasteland’ published. Along the way you get to help a bunch of misfits build a skate park, and impress the pro scene skaters.

The gameplay of THAW hasn’t altered too much from the paradigm set up in THUG. You skate up to people with Stars over their head, and they will give you goals to achieve in order to progress the story. Most of these involve tricking off certain items in the map to proceed to the next goal. All the old tricks are available, and if you know the series you won’t have any problems performing them. The key to most goals is to perform the tricks called out, or gets the highest possible score in a combo. New tricks include rolls, off the board skills, and old skate tricks pioneered by the Dog Town Z Boys. Rolls are where you spin your entire body when in the air, and they look cool although they’re quite difficult to pull off. The off-the board skills involve wall climbing and flipping off walls. The old school moves include the Natas spin which is spinning on a pivot, and the Bert Slide, which is where you put your hand on the ground and pivot on your hand, much like how surfers touch the wave when surfing.

Once you unlock the skate park, usually the goal will involve tricking off something in the environment causing it to crash or smash, and then the item will be transported to the skate park, where you’re encouraged to make a big score off of it in some way. This is a little different to the THUG series where the goal was just to cause destruction and open up new areas of the maps. This does happen in THAW, although not to such a great extent. Something that is different is that you can now skate from one side of world to the other without seeing any loading screens. This makes the game world seem much more cohesive, and it’s a lot of fun skating and tricking from one area of LA to another. For example, it’s possible to skate from Hollywood to East LA via the subway. There’s a bit of slowdown in the connecting areas, but it’s barely noticeable.

The BMX is a new feature and replaces the vehicles found in THUG. Whilst the controls are similar to the skateboard, the bike does have different physics and some different tricks. For example, you use the triggers as the front and rear breaks. And yes, you can flip the bike by applying too much pressure to the front break at too high a speed. Tricks are pulled off using the same face buttons as skateboarding, as well as the Right Joystick to do further BMX specific moves, such as tail whips and crank tricks. The bike isn’t used a great deal in the story, but is a lot of fun to ride – much better than the vehicles in the previous series, and by finding the guy with the bike icon above his head and performing certain tricks, you can make money to customise your skater.

Classic mode returns with classic maps from the entire Tony Hawk series, and like in THUG, this is a welcome addition to the game, as it extends the gameplay greatly. This time Co-operative Mode on classic allows two players to try and achieve the goals in the two-minute time limit together. In addition to these modes, all the usual Multiplayer of the Tony Hawk game are included such as Trick Attack, Score Challenge, Slap!, Combo Mambo, Firefight, and a new one called Pot ‘o Gold, – the person who is “it” scores points until they are hit by another player, who then becomes “it”. And also the Create-A- modes make a welcome return, allowing you to customise your online skater, create tricks, new graffiti tags, and skateparks. Unfortunately you can’t take your parks online, which is a shame.

Xbox Live play makes a welcome entry into THAW. There are three extra modes available on Live and they are Elimiskate, Goal Attack and Capture the Flag. Elimiskate is like trick attack, but the person with the lowest score at the end of the round is eliminated. This seems to be the most popular game on Live, and playing it I experienced a little bit of lag, but never enough to really cause concern. Sometimes the lag will cause you to do utterly weird things, like change direction in mid air, but it never seemed to actually interrupt the flow of the game. Goal Attack is like playing classic mode against other people – the person to score the most goals like collect the Videos, or find the letters SKATE – wins. Not knowing the maps makes this mode a little more difficult for n00bs, so practice in Classic mode first. Capture the Flag is fun, but I have difficulty finding players. Overall the Live experience is just like playing in with a friend, and is great fun, and a great break from all the shooters and driving games.

Apart from the cool artwork of Jimbo Philips, THAW doesn’t really boggle the mind with its graphics. The levels are colourful, but the detail is lacking in the skater models. There are certain times where graphic and animation glitches occur, especially when on the bike and you end up in an unusual position the animation will freak out and you’ll see your skater spin or jump around in place, but these occur fairly infrequently. There are some cool animations though, and the breakdance move is classic, especially when you do it in the alien costume.

The music is, as always, top notch. The game kicks off with Dead Kennedy’s Holiday in Cambodia, which made me rate the game highly right from the beginning. The soundtrack is full of old and new punk, hiphop and rock, and of course you can have your own soundtracks, but there was never I moment when I thought the music was repetitive or boring. The dialogue is a little less top notch, with some scenes the game pausing a little too long when loading the next line, making it seem very much like the lines were read rather than acted. There doesn’t seem to be too much emotion in the readings either, but it’s never enough so you want to mute the game.

Conclusion:
THAW shows that the series isn’t quite dead, but like THUG2 it’s really hard to see what they can do with the series in the future. The addition of Xbox Live means fans can finally compete and rank themselves against each other online, and it’s more than worth the price for that. But if you’ve played THUG and THUG2, then THAW isn’t all that different. The return to more trick based gameplay is welcome, but there doesn’t seem to be much more they can do with the series. Then again, I said that at the end of my THUG2 review, and Neversoft have delivered an enjoyable gameplay experience once again.

Pros:
A welcome return to trick based gameplay
BMX is really fun to ride
New tricks and animations that look cool.
Finally Xbox live enabled, with fun, relatively lag free skating to be had.
No loading screens between areas.

Cons:
Some graphical glitches
Voice acting not that great
No real improvement to gameplay (but that’s only because it’s so good to begin with)

87/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Tony Hawk’s Underground 2

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Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 (THUG2 from here in) is the second in the “underground” series, and 6th in the Tony Hawk Skater series. The original THUG was a great departure from the tradition of the Tony Hawk games, by placing you as the central character going across the world in a cohesive storyline, rather than choosing your favourite Pro-Skater and haphazardly moving from park to park. It introduced two new modes of transport for your skater – off the board walking and vehicles. The THUG2 doesn’t offer too much different apart from a wacky new story, and comes across feeling as an update rather than a fully-fledged sequel.

This time the series has gone totally MTV, featuring Bam Margera and the loons from the TV series “Jackass”. The story sees you join Team Hawk with other pro skaters in a race around the world on the World Destruction Tour. Your goal is to smash and break as much as humanly possible in each city that you travel to, beating Team Bam’s score. The story is, as you would expect if you’ve seen the TV show, puerile, immature and at times gross, but it has it’s moments of laugh out loud hilarity, especially if you’re a fan of this unique blend of humour. Some people may be put off by this, but remember – skating is first and foremost an activity of fun. Tony, Bam, Steveo, Bob Burnquist, and all those guys are great mates who really do crazy stuff both on and off the camera. To make it into some kind of serious endeavour, especially in a computer game, totally misses the point.

In Story mode, you build up your skaters stats by performing tricks. Following the formula of the previous THUG game, the more tricks you perform the better your skater becomes. For example, if you do a double kick flip your kick trick meter goes up, and to go up again you need to pull off a triple kick flip. It’s a nice way of building up your character, but if you’re patient enough you can max out the stats on the first level, making the other levels just a little more easier. Throughout each level there are many light posts and glass windows to smash through, and this is where the destruction part comes into play. Each level has some kind of structure which can be deformed by tricking in a particular place. For example, on the first level grinding the cannons whilst your board is on fire shoots a building under construction allowing you access to more places to skate.

There are no mindblowing new stunts this time around. All the tricks from series are here, and the new tricks are simply cherry on an already scrumptious apple pie. There’s the ‘freakout’ where hitting the Y button causes your skater to flip out and kick or smash the board, and this can be the starting point to linked combos. There’s a sticker slap which replaces the wall plant, and you can get off the board and tag graffiti on walls. Vehicles have been made a little better – you won’t be racing cars around this time, but be using smaller motorised vehicles. They handle much like the skateboard, but are far more ‘extreme’. This lack of new moves may well be the first indication that Neversoft may finally be clutching at straws with the franchise.

For those who didn’t like the direction THUG took the series, the game also ships with a “classic mode”. This takes it back to the old school and instead of the outrageous antics of Story mode, you’re presented with the classic THPS challenges, such as collect the letters S K A T and E, and timed trick modes. This mode is far more satisfying, as you feel compelled to explore the maps a lot more in the effort to get greater scores. You can also unlock some of the most popular maps from the series, although if you’re a fan of the series you would have skated these to death already.

The extreme customisation is back once again, and as well as creating the perfect skater, graffiti tag, tricks and skate parks, you can now make your own goals. It’s a little bit fiddly, but then again you’re basically given the tools to make your own version of the game! However, the only way these can be shared is via memory card swapping – again Xbox Live! is totally overlooked and not only can we not play against another person online, we can’t even share user created goodies. Multiplayer is limited to two people on one console – this time around not even system link play is included. The multiplayer modes are as numerous as in the previous title, but yet again the lack of innovation here suggests that Neversoft are running out of ideas.

The Tony Hawk series has never been a great looking series, and THUG2 is no exception. It’s not an ugly game, it’s just no Halo. However, the massive environments and rock solid framerate more than make up for this, and this time around there is an over-the-top sensibility, almost cartoonish in feel, and it works really well with the outrageous activities in Story mode. The Soundtrack on the other hand has always been a big stand out for the series, and again THUG2 has an outstanding number of tracks. This time there is the usual suspects – EMO, Rap, Old school hiphop and punk – but there are also some quite surprising tunes in the form of songs by Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash and Joy Division. And, if you like graffing and grinding to the classy sounds of Mozart, you always have to option of importing your own playlists stored on your Xbox.

Conclusion:
THUG2 shows signs of the franchise weakening. There is no real improvement to the gameplay – you essentially have THUG with a few nips and tucks here, more whistles and bells there, but nothing in the way of a major upgrade. This can be seen as a good or bad thing – the gameplay is still as solid and exciting as it always has been, and if it ain’t broke… But the question has to be asked – how much longer can THQ and Neversoft carry this beast in this form? After 5 years the gameplay is getting a little stale, and whilst the game isn’t ho-hum, it’s not exactly mindblowing either. The lack of multiplayer online play is a serious oversight and would give the game greater longevity. Even 4 player split screen would have been nice.

Pros:
Funny story if you’re into the whole “Jackass” thing
Inclusion of “Classic Mode” in case you don’t.
Massive amounts of hiddens and unlockables
Great level of detail in customisations

Cons:
No real improvements over the previous game
No online or system link multiplayer

82/100

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Tony Hawk’s Underground

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The Tony Hawk Pro Skater series has been an institution in gaming since the late 90s. It set the mould for all extreme sports games that have appeared since, with many games using it’s simple control set up to allow the average player to pull off stunning tricks quite easily, as well as letting the more experienced play rack up massive points and show off their skills. Each of the games in the series added to the range of tricks and customisation of the game, but with Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4, the series was looking a bit thin. How far can you really go with a skate boarding game?

Tony Hawk’s Underground (THUG from now on) takes a departure from the usual Tony Hawk games, as YOU are the central character. No longer forced to play the part of one of the world’s greatest skater; from the beginning of the game you create your own skater and play with them throughout the game. Skater creation is quite a lot of fun, and quite some time can be spent going through the motions in perfecting your character. And the character can look quite average to very bizarre, with any colour of skin from brown to bright blue, a wide assortment freaky hairdos, a collection of tattoo’s that can be scaled and placed on many parts of the body, plus an incredibly wide range out clothing from safari suits to clown outfits. There’s even the option to be a skeleton complete with bare bones and skull!

This ties neatly into the new Story mode of the game. Unlike previous games where you start out as a Pro, and travel from city to city and park to park, story mode builds you up from being a no name street rat in New Jersey to a major Pro skating the big parks of the world. This is quite a departure from previous titles, as it links the hitherto unlinked cities and parks, giving you a particular and deeper reason for finding yourself wanting to move from location to location. Although it’s rather contrived, it adds a refreshing difference to a game that has had essentially the same gameplay for almost 5 years. In THUG, the Pro Skaters still make an important impact, as they serve as the plot devices in most cases, and you have to meet them and achieve objectives (or goals as they are called) they set to progress through the game. The old favourites are there, such as Chad Muska, who is one of the first met in New Jersey, plus of course Tony Hawk, Bob Burnquist, old schooler and all round nutter Stacy Peralta, and a couple of new stars including Arto Saari, Paul Rodriguez and Mike Vallely.

The joy of story mode is two fold – you can skate around and explore, and when you are ready go up to those marked with stars and then attempt to do the goal they require of you. You’re not forced along a linear trail. Even better though, you can simply hit “start” and then select the goal you want to do. This is especially good if you can’t find someone on the map, or are just lazy like me. Furthermore not all the goals have to be completed. There is a minimum amount that must be completed in each level to proceed to the next, but there are more goals than required for that level, so those that don’t hold your interest can be skipped. Unlike previous versions, skills aren’t built up by completing goals, but rather as you skate around the expansive cities and parks performing tricks, skills build up. For example, doing a double kickflip will increase the flip skill by one point, and this can be attempted at any time in the story mode. As you become an Amateur and then Pro, the tasks to increase your stats become more complex; again, using the flip tricks as an example, you have to perform a double triple kickflip as a Pro to increase its stats. It’s almost like a role-playing game progression, and again adds just that little bit extra, making the game feel much refreshed. In addition to the required goals, there are also goals that teach you new tricks, and these are acquired by talking to skaters with orange hexagons over their heads. Some of these are quite a challenge, but they can be attempted at any time when you are in the level, and can be revisited later via the pause menu.

There’s also something completely new added to THUG – the ability to get off your board. This allows the levels to be explored like never before. You can jump and grapple and climb to the most inaccessible parts of the level, finding bonuses and unlockables and places to do awesome tricks from. In addition to this, there are also vehicles that are available to drive. Although this adds to the gameplay immensely, the handling of both these is a little less than optimal. Running on foot feels akin to running in mud, and vehicles drive like tanks. Having said that though, it does allow a nice change of pace, and the ability to combo and jump off your board (called a caveman) and then back onto it allows for massive amounts of points.

This series is well known for it’s unlockables and customisation, and THUG ups the ante once again. I’ve already discussed the character creation, but there’s even more customisation that is unlocked during story mode, including deck building and special moves. Deck building is unlocked once you go Pro, and here you get to make your custom deck. Using a wide variety of graphics, text and colour, the amount of board customisation is phenomenal. Likewise, the special moves you can make are truly awesome – want to make a triple triple kickflip with a 900 frontside grab at the end? No problemo! The easy to use interface allows you to create a near limitless array of totally over the top special moves by combining tricks, including other specials. In addition to this, there’s also a fantastic map editor, the best in any Tony Hawk game so far, and possibly one of the best in any console game. The new rail tool allows pinning of rails to all objects, so you can have a rail hanging off and around every object in the park. You can also create goals for your skate park, much like the goals found throughout the level, and you can simply customise for hours on end, in addition to the hours of gameplay found in story mode.

Unfortunately for Xbox users, these maps and tricks can’t be shared over Xbox Live! and the multiplayer options are also limited to two player and system link, although there’s always the option of tunnelling if you must play people on the other side of the world. The Multiplayer options are quite varied though, and they include:

  • Trick Attack – beat your opponent before the buzzer
  • Score Challenge – beat your opponent to the target score
  • Combo Mambo – bust the highest combo before the time limit
  • Slap! – beat your opponent off their board by getting a special and collide with them
  • King of the Hill – get the crown before your opponent, and then keep away
  • Graffiti – tag the joint by hitting the most objects
  • Fire Fight – Do combos to gain fireballs and shoot them at your opponent with the directional pad; new to THUG
  • Goal Attack (System Link Only) – beat your opponent in story mode or with your self created goals
  • Capture The Flag (System Link Only) – the traditional game of CTF, but on skateboards
  • Horse (2 Player Only) – nail a trick and get a letter if your opponent beats it. First to HORSE (or word of your choice) loses!
  • Free Skate – go crazy on the map of your choice!

Final thoughts:

THUG continues the great tradition of the Tony Hawk games, and attempts to and exceeds in prolonging it’s life by adding the ability to get off the board, and also drive around. While these aren’t great revolutions in gameplay, and not that well executed, they do add to the game greatly. The level of customisation is phenomenal, and allows your creative side to run wild. While this won’t win over any new fans, those who like the genre will love these additions, and those who thought that the Tony Hawk series was on it’s last legs may be more than surprised at what has been dished up.

Pros:

Great new story mode that moves the series forward.
More customisation than you can poke a stick at, allowing for hours of gameplay.
The ability to get off the board and run around, and even drive vehicles.

Cons:

Off the board play not well implemented.
No Live Support.
Not one for those who aren’t fans of the skating genre.

Score: 88%

inthemix.com.au, Review, Writing

Xmen: Wolverine’s Revenge

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xbox

Riding on the coattails of the movie, Wolverine’s Revenge tells the tale of our friend Logan and how he is infected with a deadly virus giving him 48 hours to live. Only by returning to the site of the secret government “Weapon-X” Facility and finding the vaccine can he survive. Featuring the voice talents of Patrick Stewart as he role of Professor Xavier, and Mark Hamill as Wolverine (don’t ask my why it isn’t Hugh Jackman), a host of other Mutants, and loads of fighting, you can’t go wrong, can you?

Well, unfortunately you can. This game has to be one of the most frustrating games I’ve played to date. When you throw your controller at the screen in the first level, you know that no matter how you look at the game you are not going to give it a good review. There are some very clever innovations in this game, but they’re just not worth the hassle of pushing that little power button and dealing with the atrocious gameplay.

First off, I’ll talk about the good parts of the game. Well, you are playing Wolverine after all, and he has some pretty impressive moves. You punch and kick with the X and Y buttons respectively, jump with the A button and perform “Strikes” with the B button. Strikes are performed when you are in a position between two or more enemies, and the word “Strike” flashes up on screen. You perform some pretty killer moves.

Strike is also used when sneaking, done by holding the black button, and as you get closer to a target who is unaware of your presence, the “strike” appears and you do a Stealth Strike. While not entirely new, it’s a lot of fun and you often pick up “dogtags” that allow you to do better looking and more damaging strikes. Also, when fighting, a flurry of blows can leave your opponent dizzy, and you can then use finishing moves to pick them up to throw them or slice them.

Another good aspect of this game is the Heightened Senses Mode. In this mode you can see footprints, heat signatures, and scent trails, telling you where your enemy is. You can hear better and see hidden objects like mines and secret compartments, and if you can see an enemy you can see a little ‘ghost’ of yourself showing you the best way to take that enemy down. It’s quite a cool little addition to the game, and if only the gameplay wasn’t so stinkingly horrible it would make the game quite a good one.

As I just mentioned, the gameplay sucks. I don’t know where to start. Maybe I should start with the fact that you can’t save the game during a level. Not that this is bad in and of itself, but in this game if you make one tiny little mistake, you have to go all the way back to the start of the level. Tiny mistakes like you are in a room with 8 guards, no healing power, and you’re told by Professor Xavier that you have to move quickly. So, instead of fighting, you run towards the lift – sounds like a reasonable thing to me…

EEERP! Wrong, the guards beat you to the lift, even though they’re on the other side of the room, and you have to start the level all over again. By the way, once you’re in that lift, it’s the end of the level. The gameplay is not difficult, it’s just that if you stuff up, you go back to the start, and do the whole level again. As you often don’t know what’s around the corner, you find yourself making many mistakes, and find yourself doing the same level over and over and over again.

Sneaking is another stupid part of this game. You sneak along with your back against the walls, but at every join in the wall you have to release yourself from the wall, move around the join, and then go back to the wall. Again, this wouldn’t be bad if the walls were continuous, but each and every cave and rock wall is made of zigzagged sections of wall, making it IMPOSSIBLE to sneak along. In some levels sneaking is MANDATORY, so why the hell did they make the game work in this way? There’s more bad stuff, Like this piss poor AI, but I can’t be bothered mentioning it because I simply shouldn’t have to – no game should be this bad.

I guess the graphics aren’t too bad, but the trails in the snow around Wolverine are just totally wrong, and the sound is adequate and you can put your own soundtrack in. There are some groovy Xmen related things to unlock, like different costumes and stories about the characters and such, which add that little something extra I guess, but is it worth playing with such lousy gameplay? I don’t think so. I really wanted to enjoy this game, but it is like the game makers realised the film was coming out, and skimped on the gameplay to cash in, which is a real pity as this could have been a really good game.

4/ 10.