Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

As I said in my early preview of Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam – if you want to leverage a brand new control scheme like that of the Wii, you create a game from scratch around it.  Activision’s recently acquired developer Toys for Bob has done exactly that with this new Tony Hawk spinoff.  Utilizing every nuance of the unique Wii gesture system, they have built a game based almost entirely around downhill speed racing in 8 locations around the world.  Machu Pichu, Hong Kong, San Francisco, and Chicago are just a few of the locations where you’ll face off against a cast of 12 characters to determine who is the best downhill racer.  I put quite a bit of time into this game, but my non-gaming wife put almost as many in herself.  This game has single handedly convinced my wife to buy the Wii.  Let’s take a closer look at how that happened…

You’ll start off the game with a 8 players to choose from out of the total of 12 that can be unlocked, including Tony Hawk himself.  You can also create your own skater with their own attributes such as logos, stats, and clothes. The characters are brightly colored stereotype caricatures, meaning that you’ll get to chose from the dreadlocked guy, Ammon, the muscle shirt wearing meathead, Gunnar, the pink haired punker chick from Britain, MacKenzie, and the like. My personal favorite is the Goth chick Jinx who sports tattoos, black leather pants, black hair with red streaks, and a black and red tube top as her initial outfit. She does a vampy little animation before she starts her run, and again when she wins a race.  Each character has their own style, and it is well reflected in the animations.

As I mentioned above, you’ll visit many locations throughout the course of the game - Machu Pichu, San Francisco, Chicago, Hong Kong, and Edinburgh, just to name a few.  Each area is visually unique, with characteristics you’d expect out of each city visually represented.  Hong Kong has dragons, gongs, lanterns, Junk boats, and bright neon lights everywhere.  On the opposite side of the coin, Machu Pichu is lush green mountain tops with narrow platforms, death defying cliffs, and beautiful mist-covered vistas to explore.  Given that there are over 100 races to complete, you’ll be thankful that the game does not reveal the entirety of the levels in one run, but gives you longer courses to run the further you get into the game. 

For a game that is entirely based on downhill racing, the framerate is almost the most important thing. Given the speed that this game moves, a solid framerate is a necessity, not a luxury. Thankfully, Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam showed a perfect framerate running at 480p and Widescreen, with no sign of slowdown, regardless of what was on screen.  Even the four player splitscreen showed no signs of struggle.  Impressive!

It is clear that this title was created specifically for the Wii. Showing no sign of being a port, with a crisp look for all the textures and scenes, this Wii launch title is pretty easy on the eyes.  When you complete a tier in the single player game, you’ll get a glimpse of the concept art that eventually morphed into the title you are playing, and it is impressive just how close those two visual objects are to each other.  The only aspect of the game that really struck me as odd visually was the cutscenes when you unlock a new skateboard.  You’ll see Tony Hawk thrust his board in the air and yell “Yea!”, then toss the board offscreen.  You’ll obtain the new board, and be able to select it any time.  The next time you get a new board, you’ll see the same exact animation.  Why can’t we get some different footage?  It is a pretty minor quibble with what is otherwise a pretty fantastic game, visually speaking.

The Wii is about trying new things.  The first thing you’ll notice in the sounds of Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam are the sounds coming out of your Wiimote.  Yea, you heard me correctly, the sounds coming out of the Wiimote!  The internal Wiimote speaker makes sounds of your board hitting the ground, grind sounds, jump sounds, and many other effect sounds that you might not expect.  I couldn’t see that it made any difference in the game, but it is something new! 

The sounds in the game are pretty standard fare, but the voice work is top notch.  All of the characters are caricatures and stereotypes, so they play this to the hilt.  My favorite character, Jinx, makes comments about the “Cookie Dough Incident”, while Ammon talks about his senile grandmother putting her dentures on the spice rack. Before each level, a character will talk about themselves or another character in a pseudo-interview style format, and the humor hits almost every time.  I ran roughly 60 races right in a row without hearing a single repeat of the intro stuff.  It is very easy to like the characters when the humor is this good.  “This is for all the Goths out there…actually no…I hate them too.”

The soundtrack for Tony Hawk games are pretty impressive, and Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam is no exception.  Iron Maiden contributes a track, as does the likes of Motorhead, Lagwagon, Public Enemy, Wild Child, and White Zombie.  There are roughly 40 licensed tracks to fill out the soundtrack, so similar to Tony Hawk’s Project 8, there is a good likelihood you’ll find something you like. 

The controls on the Wii are pick-up-and-play intuitive.  There is almost NO learning curve to Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam.  First off, this game only uses the Wiimote, so all of the controls are in reference to the single controller.  You take the controller in both hands, similar to the way you’d hold a NES controller.  By tilting the Wiimote left and right, you shift your character’s weight left or right, turning the board. Tilting forward starts your player’s momentum. The D-Pad allows you to punch or kick your opponents or innocent bystanders – a motion that can be done with the Wiimote by pulling your hands left or right horizontally.  Holding A while turning a corner will make your skater crouch down, using their hands on the ground to bust out a high-speed powerslide.  Holding down 2 on the controller crouched your player for an ollie, and releasing it hops your character into the air.  Since this is a Tony Hawk game, you’ll need to pull off some tricks in your run, or risk some serious hazing from any real-life observers.  Holding down 1 enables grinds, flips, and punching. A quick snap upwards on the controller makes your character perform a flip in the air.  On the off chance that you perform an ultra-faceplant move, you simply shake the Wii controller like a drumstick to get your player back onboard.  This is the same move you do to activate the turbo that you can earn from performing tricks.  The trigger under the Wiimote allows you to grab the board, just like you would on a real board. One trick that will help you find new shortcuts is the sticker slap – learn it well. 

The rest of the controls are very simple.  Hit the 2 button to crouch, release it to ollie. Tilting the Wiimote left or right will steer your character accordingly, as well as control your balance during a grind.  You can use this same tilt gesture to turn left or right in the air.  To perform a trick, simply hold the 2 button and hit a direction on the D-Pad. Flip tricks are done in the same way, but using the 1 button.  Holding A while turning a corner will make your character powerslide, grabbing a little bit of speed along the way. 

To make sure you learn the new system, there is a short tutorial that you’ll get to play the first time you start Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam.  The tutorial walks you through basic moves like ollies, combinations, flips, grabs, combat, and how to use boost.  All of these elements serve as the foundation for the game, so you can revisit this tutorial at any time via the options menu. 

Since Downhill Jam focuses more on grinds and finding good lines to pull off your tricks, Toys for Bob has made it more difficult to bail off your board.  To keep the momentum going, you’ll find that you can pull off almost any move without crashing, but instead you’ll suffer a slowdown in speed, which is far worse.

There are often several options on how to get to the bottom of the level, so you’ll probably end up playing a level many times to really master it.  How can you know when you’ve got it down?  There is a Gold, a ‘2nd place is first loser’ Silver, and a ‘you should be ashamed’ Bronze crown that you can earn based off of completing objectives.

After all this, here is the part that blew me away.  My wife, the non-gamer, asked me if she could try the game.  After a few short minutes of play, she was doing almost as well as I was, and was very convinced that we ‘need’ a Wii and this game as soon as it launches.  The Wiimote and some excellent design made my wife into a gamer.  This may be the happiest moment of my life.

As I said before, Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam is a downhill racing title.  It functions similar to EA’s SSX title, or the old school title, Skate or Die.  You start off at the top of a very large ramp, and you grind and trick your way through your levels to complete them.  Sometimes it is that simple, and coming in first is all you need to do.  Other objectives may have you trying to beat down civilians in a certain time limit. The first tier is set up with four races, three follow up races, two semi-final races, and then 1 grand finale race.  Your objective is not actually to win every race, but more sensibly to earn points by placing in first, second, or third place.  Beating half of the tier netted me a new skateboard, and beating the whole thing nabbed a second one for my collection.  I also unlocked a new skater and concept art for the game. 

Accomplishing these objectives has everything to do with skill, a little practice, and having the right skateboard.  Each player will have stats that govern their skills – specifically Speed, Turning, Balance, Jump, and Combat.  Unlike other Tony Hawk titles, you’ll unlock boards through racing that modify your stats.  A longboard might be better with speed and combat, but could really suck for Balance.  Objectives that were otherwise impossible may become easy by using a far faster board.  Each character has their own special tricks, so you might find that you may need to utilize those in later races when score matters more. 

Speaking of the later races, after you rank up to Rookie and skate into the second tier of the game, you’ll see that you now have five sub-tiers to complete, with some spots being a question mark.  These spots are not defined, and will select an event at random for you to try to complete.  Beating a character will unlock them in challenge mode, and allow you to play the single player or multiplayer version of this character.

Racing and beating up pedestrians isn’t all that Downhill Jam is about.  There are other modes in the game to divert you from the normal races.  You’ll jump in on the Chinatown Collision Destruction mode which asks that you break anything and everything that moves, all while racing to the finish without running out of time.  You’ll slalom, hitting blue slalom gates to earn extra time to test if you can reach the finish line before you run out of time.  Elimination is fairly straightforward as well – when the time expires, the person in last place is eliminated from the race. 

There are over 100 races in the game, so you are bound to run into repeats of certain levels eventually.  I was able to complete more than half the game on normal difficulty in less than 8 hours, so this might be a title you rely on more for multiplayer than single player.  Having to re-run an earlier race with a new board to get a gold crown might help negate some of that.

The Wii is easy to control, and this title capitalizes on that aspect nicely. The easy to play, difficult to master gameplay of this title will make it one of the hottest selling launch titles, hands down.  Forget Excitetruck, this title should be running in the Kiosks!

The value of this game is simple – it is the easiest Wii title to control for anyone, regardless of gaming skill.  The control scheme is organic, and the gameplay surges because of this.  The multiplayer aspects of this game are clearly a huge benefit though.

At the press event I attended a few months ago, I saw something on Downhill Jam that I’d never seen – fellow press members playing together and having a blast.  Playing four player split-screen turned out to be a far more exciting event than it had any right to be.  This game brought together members of the press who don’t normally talk. 

There are four multiplayer gameplay types you’ll be playing:

• Slalom: In slalom, you’ll race by yourself or with opponents through big blue slalom gates.  Starting the race with only a few seconds to get to the first gate, you’ll earn more time as you pass through the objective successfully.  Building boost through tricks to get to objectives more quickly becomes paramount. 
• Trick Event: In the Trick Events, you’ll hit a large ring of fire that slows down time, allowing you to really focus in on your tricks for maximum points.   The objective is obvious – get as many points as possible.
• Elimirace: Elimirace is as simple as it sounds.  The last player to hit various areas of the level are eliminated until you are the last skater standing.
• Steal the Head: In Steal the Head, there is only one head for all of the players.  You have to keep the head by staying in the lead.  Putting the smackdown on another player, or tricking for big points steals the head for you. 

The multiplayer events can be played in a Series Event style as well.  You get 9 pre set events to compete in, with all unlocked modes being playable in any order you wish.  The events can be done in a long race or short race format, thus expanding the large levels. 

As the day wound down and I needed to look at other titles for review, my wife was chomping at the bit to play this title again.  If this is any clear indication of a non-gamer’s reaction to this title, expect that you’ll be downhill jammin’ for a long while. 

I’m sure The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess will be the hottest selling Wii title at the end of this year.  I’m also just as sure that this title should also be under your tree.  With a great control scheme, graphics that don’t look ported, fantastic humor, and a whole lot of races to complete, this quality title is worthy of being a member of the Tony Hawk franchise.  This is a safe Day-1 pickup for the Wii, just make sure you buy the three spare Wiimotes for your friends!

Gaming Trend Score

92

1. Graphics: 90
2. Audio: 90
3. Controls: 100
4. Gameplay: 90
5. Value/Replay: 90
6. OVERALL:92