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.  To this end, the team at Neversoft has tossed away the engine from Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, with the lofty goal of re-building the Tony Hawk franchise for the Next Generation.  A whole new graphical engine utilizing bleeding-edge body scanning to bring each skater to life would be used.  For the first time ever, each skater was motion captured, utilizing up to 20 animations simultaneously instead of being hand-animated.  An all new stat system running in the background, with full Live support was integrated.  A completely new take on skills, challenges, and tricks in general was born.  When I say that Project 8 is Tony Hawk reborn – I’m not just talking about eye-candy.  Put on your pads and helmet folks, let’s put our Vans on some grip tape.

Last year’s Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland was a bit of a half-step between the last generation and the Next Gen titles of today.  It utilized a great deal of the previous generation’s animations, dropping in higher resolutions and some lighting to give it a slight edge.  Fans were disappointed.  Neversoft took this criticism to heart and built an entirely new graphics engine for Tony Hawk’s Project 8 from the ground up.  Doing on-site motion capture work at Neversoft, Kristina Adelmeyer (Motion Capture Supervisor), Jeff Swenty (Cinematic Lead), and their team have used motion capture in a whole new way for this franchise.  Rather than using motion capture only for the cinematics, as it was in Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, each skater was motion captured for the in-game animation system.  63 days of hard work later, and we are presented with something very new – motion capture that actually alters gameplay. (we’ll talk about how it affects gameplay when we get to that section)  Since every trick was performed by the professionals, their mannerisms, tricks, foot position, arm movement, body placement, and even the flexing of the board and trucks on landing are captured to a sub-millimeter level, meaning we get a completely organic animation system. (There were over 15 points of articulation on the mocap skateboard alone!)  This realistic representation of the balance and precision that goes into every trick makes the game truly come alive. 

Coupled with the fantastic new animation system, Project 8 now features some new technology for their texture work.  Using state of the art techniques such as 3D laser skinning, the art team was able to give each character an incredible amount of detail. By putting the pros in a giant cylinder, and painting them with lasers over a span of about 2 minutes, a realistic representation of skater from the neck down is created.  Folds, wrinkles, bends, and overall texture of the surfaces are represented in a roughly 500,000 polygon 3D model.  Taking another few minutes, and focusing only on the skaters face, a roughly 600,000 polygon model of the whole head is created.   Using a 22 Megapixel camera, the character artists apply texture maps and normal mapping to the character model pieces.  These two objects are combined at the neck, creating the final skater you see in the game.  The whole process looks like it saves a lot of work in the hand-animation department, but creates a lot of work for the character modeling department.  The end result, however, is a realistic character model the likes of which you’ve never seen.  Clothing flexes and bends without looking like it was painted on.  Wrinkles form in the fabric, and it simply looks alive. 

With all this fantastic art, you have to know the team is going to want to show it off.  You’ll get to see these textures at an incredibly close range for the Nail the Trick moves of the game.  Zooming in on the feet and legs of your skater, you can see the detail in their shoes, read the words on their wheels, and see the board flex when it hits the ground.  Take your time and get a good look – the whole thing is in slow-mo for your viewing pleasure.

These high resolution textures, normal mapping, real time lights and shadows, and incredibly large world does not come without a price.  Unfortunately, there are a few places that give the graphic engine a bit of a hard time. The vast majority of the time, it seems that the framerate sits at 60 with ease, but at seemingly random times I noted a few hitches in the framerate.  Thankfully, these were not gameplay affecting as they didn’t dip much below 30 and left as quick as they came. Additionally, I did run into a clipping issue in the game twice, but overall there is great deal of polish on this new engine. 

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. 

Another area of great concentration is the sound effect work.  Depending on the surface you skate upon, 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.  Neversoft has put quite a few pros into the game, motion capturing their mannerisms and body language, and has used their real voices in the game.  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.  Since you can now break bones (albeit very temporarily), prepare for the satisfying crunch of snapping limbs as well.  Yum!

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 the right trigger or left trigger 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 (and you might as well do it, you get an achievement for completion) 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? 

The Playstation 3 brings a new element to the game with the Sixaxis controller.  If you go into the options and enable it, you can use the tilt control functions of the game to control your skater.  Three seperate aspects can be enabled seperately - Tilt Balance, Tilt Steering, and Tilt Tricks.  Tilt Balance allows you to use the controller to balance and steer your skater during manuals and grinds.  Tilt Steering allows you to steer your skater as they move about the level.  Tilt Tricks allows you to tilt the controller in different directions while you are in the air to perform grab or flip tricks.  Essentially, the tilting of the controller simulates the analog sticks.  With this option enabled you can also shake the controller to go into a manual.  When in Nail the Trick mode you can control the board with these tilt functions.  It takes a bit of time to get used to, and ultimately I found that I could get a much higher score with these functions turned off. 

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 5 skaters.  You have a girl, a dreadlocked guy, 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 more 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.  The worst part is that you can’t fakie your friends and tell them that you landed it on the first try – the game keeps track of how many times you attempted the trick and displays it on your progress screen.  It’ll also tell you how many points you have versus your friends so prepare for the smack talking and finger pointing to ensue.  I think there will be more bragging going on in this feature than the achievements.  (e.g. “Dude, it took you 55 tries to finish that trick?  You totally suck…”)

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. 

Speaking of practice and skill improvements, you no longer have to allocate your skill points individually.  Instead, your skill goes up much like the way it did in Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – whatever you are doing most will see an improvement.  If you are a vert-centric skater, expect your jump skills and vert skills to improve first.  Your ground game needs work too, so don’t forget those manuals and flatland tricks.  Everything you do is tracked in the game, and it doesn’t matter if you bail or not, it adds to the overall total.  Simply look in the progress screen and it’ll tell you that you need a certain number of feet doing a grind to get your next stat upgrade.  No mystery here. 

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.  If you can ace the 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.

I mentioned above that the new animation system changed the gameplay for this game in a significant way.  What I mean by that is simply this – for the first time in a game, the animation is integral to your gameplay.  In the vast majority of games, you see the same animations over and over, and you can’t interrupt them in any way.  You’ll fall in the same way every time, and you’ll jump in the same way every time.  In Tony Hawk’s Project 8, the 20 animation points on each skater, and the 15 points of articulation in the board mean that your moves are truly unique, as are the moves of every skater.  Watching Tony’s hand and foot placements when he does a trick will be completely different than watching the same trick performed by Daewon Song.  This is especially true when you are performing anything using Nail the Trick.  The slow motion means that you can manipulate the board in a way never possible at full speed, and this adds a whole new gameplay element to the series.  It also means a whole level of immersion, coming closer to photorealism than we ever have before.  Impressive would be an understatement.

With everything that has been improved in Tony Hawk Project 8, some of the hold-overs are still here.  Some challenges seem almost impossible, asking you to complete 15 things in one quick run for the Sick rating.  Granted, it is the highest level for that challenge, but I think few casual to skilled players will ever approach completing that.  Only the elite need apply.  My only other real complaint is the fact that I can’t use the Create-A-Skater system to create my own skater for the Career mode.  I can’t imagine why the initial team is restricted to only a few face options and clothing, but the expanded options are reserved only for Live. 

This is the most impressive Tony Hawk title yet.  Every aspect of the game is highly polished, and the additions to the gameplay system are well balanced and help make it more accessable to new players, as well as Tony Hawk veterans.  If you were disappointed by Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, this game should restore your faith in the series.

There are 8 multiplayer modes included in the game, but without online support, you are only going to be playing these split screen with a friend.   

• Trick Attack:  This mode is pretty simple – the player with the highest score at the end of the round wins. 
• Score Challenge: This is similar to Trick Attack, but instead of going for a full round, the first skater to reach the target score wins. 
• Combo Mambo: This is almost a combination of the Trick attack and Score challenge.  The skater with the highest scoring combo in the allotted time wins.  It only keeps your highest score, so bail at will.
• Combo Challenge: Again this feels like a combination of Trick, Score, and Combo Mambo.
• 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. 

As I said, unfortunately you won't get to play these great new modes other than in split screen with a friend as the PS3 version does not have online capabilities. The loss of 8 players hurts, but the loss of 8 player Walls action hurts even more.

One area that was in a fairly bad state recently was the Skate Park Creator.  Rather than prying it back into the game in its wounded state, Neversoft has pulled the option completely.  There are still challenges that will require you to do some minor object shuffling, but those are fairly infrequent.  If you want to use this fantastic new engine to create your Skate Park Magnum Opus, you’ll have to wait until the next Tony Hawk game to do so.

There is a great deal to do in Tony Hawk’s Project 8.  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 for 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.  The graphics, animation, sound, and revamped challenge system has created a game that will challenge the legendary Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 for its crown as the king of the series.  Adding in new modes like Walls and Nail the Trick has brought some new challenges to the already impressive stable of tricks, and the whole thing comes together quite nicely.  Fans of the series will not be disappointed, and casual players will find a more forgiving system in place for their enjoyment as well.  

Gaming Trend Score

91

1. Graphics: 95
2. Audio: 93
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 92
5. Value/Replay: 82
6. OVERALL:91