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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

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