Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Tony Hawk’s Project 8 spells the 8th game in the Tony Hawk series (re-issues, greatest hits, and spin-offs notwithstanding).  The story is simple – Tony Hawk is searching for the top 8 amateur skaters in the world to be part of his Project 8 team.  The 200 skaters in your town will compete in various challenges and competitions to determine who is the very best.  The Project 8 team will get the distinct honor of going on tour with Tony!  As I said…simple.

The Tony Hawk series has always represented something else to gamers like me – an opportunity to get out there and bust out a backwards flip that manuals, then ollies into a railslide to finish with a pogo, all without losing the skin on the palms of your hands.  While Neversoft was frantically working on the Next-Generation versions of Tony Hawk Project 8, Shabba Games was tasked with creating the closest approximation to this experience on the PS2 and the original Xbox.  Today we take a look at the PS2 version to see what those who haven’t made the leap to the Next-Generation platforms can expect.

Shabba Games had their work cut out for them.  The PS2 was launched on October 26th of 2000, making it an almost 7 year old platform.  You couldn’t possibly expect your 7 year old PC to run Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, so you can’t possibly expect the PS2 to handle the Next-Generation engine that powers Tony Hawk Project 8 on the Xbox 360 or PS3.  Much of the things that really bring the new platforms to life had to be stripped from the PS2 version to make it fit within the RAM and processing capabilities of the platform.  This means that you lose motion captured animations, normal mapping, high resolution textures, and the incredible visual detail present in the other versions.  Running at 480p and in Widescreen softens the jagged look of the game a bit, but the visible texture tiles are fairly huge. 

As I mentioned, the new motion capture animation system present in the Xbox 360 and PS3 had to be cut to fit this game on the PS2.  The loss of this animation system is an incredible blow to the previous generation systems as the organic look of the game is also lost.  Thankfully there is one area where the animation system is still top notch – the new Nail the Trick mode.

When you initiate Nail the Trick on the Xbox 360 or PS3, the game zooms in on your feet and everything moves in slow motion.  This functions the same way on the PS2, showing a level of detail not shown in the course of the regular game.  It gives you the chance to play with a Next Generation feature on the current platform, and it is certainly is the shining point for this title since you can initiate it at any point in the game. 

In any of the recent Tony Hawk games you’ll get your goals and objectives from the pedestrians and pros within the world.  Rather than use the in-game engine from the PS2 version to show these objectives, a video of the Xbox 360 version’s objective briefing is played.  This letterboxed video shows off the fantastic look of the Xbox 360, but shows a stark contrast between these two generations. 
When I look at a game like God of War, or the freshly released Final Fantasy XII, I can’t help but be a little bit disappointed in the look of this version of the game.  Since the game is compartmentalized, instead of a streaming world like it was in Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, you’d think that the quality would be a lot higher.  On the positive side, the framerate seems to be locked at 30 pretty solid.

The Tony Hawk series has used licensed music tracks for quite a while.  Every year we get a whole new mix of punk rock, metal, hip-hop, rap, and alternative to listen to while we skate around the virtual city.  Tony Hawk’s Project 8 brings 56 tracks from such artists as Ministry, The Dead Milkmen, Primus, Slayer, Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails, The Cure, The Ramones, and even some classic Cool and the Gang.  As with any collection as large and diverse as this, you will have some tracks that you love, and some that you don’t.  Neversoft is well aware of this, allowing you to set which tracks you’d like to hear, turning off the rest.  If you can’t find anything to listen to in the 56 tracks that are included, use the custom soundtrack system and go skate to the Hello Kitty theme or something.  I can’t promise you won’t get your ass kicked for that though.

Another area of great concentration is the sound effect work.  Depending on the surface you skate, the sound will react accordingly.  Wood sounds like wood, asphalt sounds like asphalt.  Grass, a pool, metal – the foley artist must have been incredibly busy as these sound fantastic. 

You can’t pull all these great skate legends together without getting voice work.  The skaters in the game have loaned their voices to the game to help give it more authenticity.  Your first big competition is hosted by Tony Hawk who gives you the details of the challenge personally.  Similarly, you’ll run into pros throughout the world that may have tips and tricks for you to improve your overall ranking.  You might even be invited to run a skate demo or two with them!  The pedestrians that roam the world are also decently voiced and help to bring the world to life. 

For those who have played previous Tony Hawk games, the controls will be very similar.  Pressing X allows you to crouch, letting it go releases your ollie.  While in the air, pressing O allows you to perform a grab trick.  Flip tricks are handled with the Square button in a similar fashion to the grab tricks.  Grinding is as simple as getting airborne, and then hitting the Triangle button.  Rocking up and then down on the D-Pad or left analog will allow you to manual, while tapping R2 or L2 upon landing allows you to revert.  The right analog handles the swing and pan of the camera.  When your special meter is full, you can click the left analog to initiate a slow-mo “focus mode”.  Nail the Trick can be done at any time you are in the air by depressing both analog sticks.  As simple as it sounds, there is a wealth of combinations and permutations that you can apply to this base control scheme, daisy chaining your tricks together to score literally hundreds of thousands of points.  Fakies, Nollies, Wallrides, Wallpushing, Spine Transfers, Skitching, Boneless, Acid Drops, Bank Drops, Natas Spins, Stalls, and more mean truly mastering the basics until you can learn to combine them effectively.  Don’t worry…Tony Hawk and the gang are here with instructions.

Prior to starting the game you should re-familiarize yourself with the control scheme by selecting the tutorial system.  Many of the pros in the game will walk you through the basics, gradually increasing the difficulty of the moves until each one presents you with a combination action that will require you to string three tricks together to pass.  It isn’t particularly difficult, but it does solidify the timing needed to be effective on your board. 

Nail the Trick is the newest mode to be added to the game, and the controls require a little bit of practice.  Essentially, the two analog sticks become your legs, allowing you unprecedented control over your tricks.  Using the sticks independently or concurrently you can create your own tricks in a slow motion environment, allowing you to pull off moves that would be otherwise completely impossible.  The left stick controls the foot that is on the left side of the screen, and the right stick controls the foot that is on the right side of the screen.  You push and hold the stick in any direction to start the board spinning.  By hitting the board with the either foot you can modify this spin, but you have to be careful as hitting it at the wrong time can send your board spinning out of control, crashing your legs into the ground with a painful crunch.  Tipping the left analog towards the front of the board will start a spin.  If you tap down while the trucks are up, you’ll get a ‘trucks up’ bonus, and it’ll add to your trick multiplier.  This’ll cause the board to spin in a corkscrew-like motion.  If you happen to catch it just right you’ll get a ‘perfect flip’ bonus as well.  The problem comes in when you are slightly off – your board may take a wobbly arc to its spin that could be very difficult to recover cleanly.  You can land your trick at any point by letting go of the analogs while the grip tape is up, but we all know that point greed is going to cause a lot of painful crashes before that happens, don’t we?  Originally, the Nail the Trick mode was added simply as an additional challenge, but through testing and feedback found that it was one of the most popular features of the game.  As a result, they have enabled players to click both thumbsticks at any point that you are airborne to initiate the Nail the Trick mode. This can be incredibly helpful in negotiating some of the more challenging competitions, so master this skill soon, and use it often.  The learning curve will have you performing faceplants pretty often until you get the hang of the new mode, but once it clicks you’ll be pulling off moves that easily push the 70,000 mark and above.  On a visit to Neversoft I won a skateboard that was autographed by the entire team for pulling a trick that was in the high 90s.  Can you break my high score with a single trick? 

Every year the Tony Hawk games bring something new to the table.  Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 introduced the manual, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 brought us the revert, which allowed skaters to tie their vert moves to a manual to keep the trick going.  Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 moved into the realm of free-roaming areas and gave us skitching, spine transfers, and freestyle flatland tricks.  Tony Hawk’s Underground took the game in a completely new direction, allowing players to create a custom character that they could ‘build’ into a professional skater via stat upgrades, and pulling off insane tricks such as a McTwist over a helicopter. It also introduced the wall push.  This was also the point in the series when the soundtrack exploded up to 77 songs, up from 36, 15, and 13 tracks in previous games, respectively.  Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 hit in 2004, and brought us the Sticker Slap, Tagging, and the Natas Spin.  In my opinion, it also spelled a major misstep in the series by introducing the jackass from Jackass, Bam Margera.  The game focused on destruction and, although it brought back the classic mode conspicuously absent in the previous Underground title, the game did not resonate with fans.  In the first move to the Next Generation platforms, Neversoft brought us Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland as an Xbox 360 launch title.  Playing a skater who moves to L.A. to try to make it big in the skate scene, the game continues with the story focus, but introduces BMX biking, but more importantly introduced a streaming system that meant no load times for the seamless world.  Citing a great gameplay experience, but a weak ‘ported’ graphical showing on the Next Gen platforms, the game felt like it didn’t quite live up to it’s fantastic potential.  All this history leads us to Tony Hawk’s Project 8.

Project 8 kicks off pretty simply – you pick a character from the roster of 3 skaters (the Next Generation versions have 5 characters to chose from).  You have a black guy, the punk rock guy with a blue Mohawk, and a short kid with a helmet. Stereotypes abound!  After a small bit of customization (you can select from three faces, and about a few dozen clothing combinations) you are told by Tony Hawk (via a TV program) that he is looking for the 8 best amateur skaters to join his Project 8 team.  Since you are #200 on that list, you have a long road ahead of you.

You’ll start off in your own neighborhood, skating near your house.  People with an orange ‘aura’ around them will give you various basic tasks that initially act as a supplement to the tutorial mode I mentioned in the controls section.  The first person you encounter will explain the revamped challenge mode, and it couldn’t be simple.  Grind to the blue line about 8 feet away for the Amateur rating, ollie a driveway into another grind about 8 more feet away to hit pro.  Hitting sick will require you to grind around the cul-de-sac, making two more jumps, before landing your last grind to make the Sick rating.  This system perseveres through the entire game, with each trick in the game containing three levels of ‘completion’.  An example might be one of the new Photo Goals where you have to pull off a simple grab trick for an Amateur rating.  Piece of cake.  Now pull it off with a 360 spin to grab that Pro rating.  Think you are slick?  Now do it with a double kickflip and make that a 540 spin please.  Yea…hope you like eating pavement. 

Challenges in the game are more familiar territory – you will first do a qualifying run to set your initial score.  This score will determine which class you’ll be competing in, whether it be AM, Pro, or Sick.  Once that is established, you are given a set time limit to score as many points as you can for a score.  On the first challenge you’ll need 105,000 points to score a 90% with the five judges.  You may need to practice and improve your skills a bit before you can hit that. 

In the Next Generation versions of the game, your skill improvements are made by simply performing a task over and over.  If you want to be better a grind moves, simply grind more often.  The PS2 version of the game eschews this method and goes back to the previous method – accomplishing objectives will earn you points that you can allocate to your individual skills as you see fit. 
While you are skating around town, you can also impress the locals to earn the new currency in the game – Stokens.  Stokens are used to purchase new tricks, pro videos, new decks, bail videos, and more, so impress those locals!  One thing I did notice – the Stokens don’t stop coming at competitions.  If you happen to have a bail-happy day and spend the bulk of your time retrying the competition, just be happy that you’ll probably walk out of the event with 1000 Stokens for your efforts.  Not that I did that…I’m just sayin.  *whistles*

As you work your way through the career mode, you’ll pick up sponsors.  One of the first you’ll see is Stereo Sound Agency, and its front man celebrity Jason Lee. (“I’m a frickin’ demon!”) If you manage to handle some challenges he tosses your way, he’ll sponsor you and stamp the Stereo logo next to your name in the roster of 200.  Poweraid Sponsored Freestyle Challenge you’ll get hooked up with another demo from your sponsor.  Picking up sponsors helps you get noticed, and helps with your rise up the list.  They also offer access to some boards and videos that were previously locked.
Shabba has modified and condensed some of the challenges in the game.  Some characters have multiple challenges instead of just one, as it is in the other versions of the game.  Also, as I mentioned before, the game is now compartmentalized.  What this means is that you’ll have to open up the next area, and then hit start, then select Skater Options, and then select your intended destination.  Once you can get to the skate shop, you do a similar thing to reach that location.  Obviously, this breaks immersion, and takes a step backward from the advances of the previous title. 

As I said earlier, Shabba Games had their work cut out for them.  Granted, we all know that the Playstation 2 platform is past long in the tooth, but Shabba worked hard to approximate a Next Generation experience on a previous generation platform.  The gameplay is certainly here, even if it feels like we’ve taken a step back to some of the previous titles in terms of mechanics. 

There are 4 multiplayer modes included in the game that you can use in the 2 player split-screen mode for the game. 

• Trick Attack:  This mode is pretty simple – the player with the highest score at the end of the round wins. 
• Graffiti: This mode has been with us for a long while – simply tag various objects with your high scoring combos, and whomever still ‘owns’ the most objects at the end of the round, wins. 
• Horse: Again, a staple of the series. Skaters pull off their sickest tricks, setting the bar for the second player to try to meet.  Failing to meet the score nabs you a letter until you spell HORSE.  If you haven’t played this game before, you need to go outside more often.
• Free Skate: No challenges, no score, and no time limit.  Just skate around with your friends to your heart’s content. 

For reasons unknown, Shabba has cut the Score Challenge, Combo Mambo, Combo Challenge, and the new mode Walls from this version.  I could deal without the others, but Walls is way too fun to drop from the roster.

There is a great deal to do in Tony Hawk’s Project 8. Even without the expansive multiplayer modes of the Xbox 360 version, the size of the world is pretty large, even before you start unlocking areas.  There is a heavier emphasis on tricks and challenges, rather than silly stuff or random item collection. While replaying the game as a different character is essentially a palette-swap, you’ll be playing Tony Hawk’s Project 8 for a while, if nothing other than to try to improve your rating from AM, to Pro, to Sick.

Neversoft has created the most realistic skate title ever made, and Shabba Games had the unenviable job of trying to crowbar it on to the previous generations.  While some things come together nicely, other areas unfortunately fall short.  The gameplay and controls are solid, and the Nail the Trick mode is a fantastic addition.  If you haven’t selected a Next Generation system yet, you might be able to squeak by on this last title, but it is really time to retire the PS2 versions of this series.

Gaming Trend Score

77

1. Graphics: 60
2. Audio: 86
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 79
5. Value/Replay: 70
6. OVERALL:77