Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Ron Burke

Let me check my calendar – yep, another year has passed and another Tony Hawk title has hit the pavement.  Before you head down that road thinking this is the ‘odd number curse’ let me tell you that quite a bit has changed since we hit the grip tape last year. 

The story for Tony Hawk Proving Ground is pretty simple – rule the local scene until you get noticed and mentored by the pros, heading down one of three paths to build your own skate career.  Will you follow the career path of personalized decks, shoes, and your face in magazines, or will you skate your own path as a hardcore skater?  If neither option appeals to you, maybe you’d rather make your own destiny by rigging your own skate world – the choice is entirely yours. 

Like the last few Tony Hawk titles, you’ll begin by simply setting up the look of your skater – the difference here is that this will be carried online this time.  Picking from a multitude of heads, faces, basic and licensed clothing, decks and deck graphics, grip tape, wheels (with graphics!), and a metric ton of accessories and other various options, you’ll set up the character you’ll be playing in the game.  I have to pause and congratulate Neversoft for fixing the long load times between graphic loads – every accessory will load as fast as you select them, so you can get to the action far faster than ever before.  If you are inclined to, you can later change out any of these options by simply hitting the options menu, so don’t fret if you suddenly change your mind on what you’d like to look like or wear. 

A vast amount of detail has been added to the player models this year.  Your clothing wrinkles and bends, and even more subtle animations have made their way in this year.  For example, the little bit of posture change before an ollie is now in the game, as are the subtle wrinkles in your clothing as you crouch.

As you progress through any of the career branches you’ll get the chance to interact with quite a few pro skaters.  They are all obviously motion captured, with more detail paid to their lip synch details and mannerisms.  While they are occasionally a bit overemphasized, it is far better than any previous title. 

There is one thing that did creep across from the previous Tony Hawk titles – inconsistent framerate.  There are several challenges that actually showcase this for some odd reason, including one that involves tricking around a fountain that drops the framerate into the teens.  Thankfully, during normal play the framerate is consistent.

As was the case in Tony Hawk’s Project 8, the game is a completely streaming world.  There is an initial load time of about 10 seconds, but beyond that you won’t spend a great deal looking at the load screen. 

The Tony Hawk titles have always had a pretty stellar soundtrack giving players a diverse range of punk, metal, rap, and rock for you to enjoy while you skate.  This year we get over 50 licensed tracks from such artists as Slick Rick, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, The Bled, Jurassic 5, and The Rolling Stones.  Given the diverse track list, you’ll have some tracks that you like and some that you skip.  Thankfully, the ability to create a custom soundtrack has made its way over to this new title, meaning you can flag the songs you want to hear, dumping the ones you don’t. This is, of course, in addition to the native Xbox 360 support of custom sountracks. 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 Barbie Horse Adventures soundtrack 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 on, 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.  Within a few moments of starting the game you’ll get to interact with Tony Hawk himself, and you’ll pretty much be working with the pros from then on. The pedestrians that roam the world are also decently voiced and help to bring the world to life.  The new aggro kick has an aggressive roar, and when coupled with the skate check move you’ll find yourself enjoying the audio experience.

If you played any of the Tony Hawk titles you’ll be immediately familiar with the controls in this title.  The left stick controls your movement, and the right stick gives you independent control of the camera.  The face buttons handle grinds, flips, grabs, and ollies.  The only thing that has really changed is the addition of Nail the Manual and Nail the Grab.  Nail the Grab is executed exactly like Nail the Trick, but you’ll hold the left trigger.  You can tweak your board by holding in a particular direction, or you can do a finger flip by doing a quarter circle with the left thumbstick.  Nail the Manual is actually even easier – simply hold the right trigger and then aim your board to land on your front or rear wheels.  You’ll keep your balance the same way you would with a standard manual. 

After you build your skater you’ll get a quick introduction to the three different styles of skater – the career skater, the rigger skater, and the hardcore skater. Career guys do it for the money, fame, and prestige – these are the guys you hear about on TV, and these are the guys that get their own franchise of games.  They are on the magazine covers, and they are running their own lines of clothing – they are the rockstars of the skating world.  On the opposite end of the spectrum are the hardcore guys.  They are only in it for themselves and skate for the pure challenge and skill of doing it.  They skate when they want, where they want, and how they want – woe to those who stand in their way as that person will likely be on the ground trying to find their teeth shortly thereafter.  In the middle are the Riggers.  Riggers see the potential in a trashcan and a pipe – they see innovation when others see junk.  They are also ballsy enough to skate it after they build it.  These are the guys who make their own trick locations instead of relying on pristine pre-built half-pipes and rails. 

To help you decide which path you’d like to take (although they really aren’t mutually exclusive per-se) you’ll meet up with pros, similar to what you’ve done in previous games.  Rigger Jeff King (I swear I’ve seen this guy on wanted posters for having bombs in his shoes or something) will help you learn how to rig.  You’ll start off with only a few pieces at your disposal, but this isn’t quite the same as last year’s iteration – you can now place them anywhere.  By hitting the back button you’ll access the rigging menu which allows you to place up to 30 objects almost anywhere in the environment.  No more snap-to-grid rigging – if you want a pipe that goes over the top of a car, just drop it in place and then skate it.  It couldn’t be simpler which makes it more accessible to people who wouldn’t normally engage in rigging.  Completing the basics gives you new gear (which you can apply immediately instead of having to go back to your pad), new skills, a few skill points in the appropriate category (rigging in this case), as well as a few extra points to spend as you see fit. 

In addition to the rigger, hardcore, and career stuff there are also career objectives that usually have you meeting up with a pro and then trying to achieve whatever tricks they can dream up.  The usual ‘skate here for am, here for pro, and here for sick’ style challenges are still here, so if that is your thing you can certainly do it.  This year, if you want to tackle the old school Tony Hawk objectives (collect S,K,A,T,E tokens, etc.) you can do that via some arcade cabinets scattered around the levels. 

A new move to the series, courtesy of the Hardcore career path, is the aggro kick allows you to tap the shoulder button timed with your foot hitting the ground to kick harder to build momentum.  If you screw up you lose all your speed gain, so practice and rhythm is important.  This’ll help with the obscenely high aerial moves that you’ll pick up as you practice.  Once you’ve picked up the aggro kick, you’ll eventually be able to add a skate check into the mix.  Given that you can get an achievement for an obscenely hard body check that sends an NPC over 175 feet, you’ll find yourself checking random pedestrians for the fun of it. 

There are a few camera goals in the game that you’ll use throughout the career paths.  The photo goals should be fairly simple as you just have to execute the trick and snap a picture when you cross the bubble of the camera target area.  The other type of camera goals are film challenges.  The camera is rolling on these, so you’ll have to pull off several tricks in succession without bailing.   I said that they should be simple but in reality there is a bug in the game that causes a bit of unnecessary difficulty.  It turns out that you can place the camera just fine, but if you attempt to adjust it the camera zooms in completely and will not allow you to adjust it, moving the bubble away from where you originally placed it.  This bug makes the goals a bit of a guessing game when they shouldn’t be.  I’ve emailed this to Neversoft to fix, so hopefully we’ll see a patch to correct this soon. 

Once you’ve finished the few challenges that give you a taste of all three types of skaters you can jump into any one of the paths by simpley skating up to a pro of that type and taking on their challenges.  Some assign demos, some ask you to pick up parts for rigging, and others expect you to follow them through crazy lines that lead you into oncoming traffic.  You can mix and match, becoming the ultimate skater by increasing skills across the board, but I found that it helps to really nail down one thread before tackling the others.

In Project 8 we saw the introduction of Nail the Trick.  It was an instant hit and fans seem to really enjoy making their own crazy moves.  Proving Ground brings us two variants that really spice things up – Nail the Grab and Nail the Manual. 

Nail the Grab allows you to hold the board with one hand while doing tweaks and hand transfers to other moves.  While nailing the grab you can also do a finger flip which you do with a quick quarter circle in any direction while in mid-air.  If you have enough air to start combining this with various tricks, you can really rip up the score.  This brings us to Nail the Manual.

Nail the Manual is executed the same way as Nail the Grab.  Once you enter Nail the Trick mode, pull the right trigger and then use the left or right thumbstick to land your board on one truck.  Once you are balancing, you’ll use up and down on your thumbstick to keep your board balanced.  It is possible to Ollie out of a Nail the Manual and move straight into Nail the Trick.  Doing this when it counts takes a bit of time and practice to pick up, but it can chain some incredible combos that’ll look fantastic on tape. 

Play the Career mode long enough and eventually you’ll get noticed by sponsors.  There are eight teams including Billabong, Element, Nixon, Hurley, Nike, Protec, and of course, Tony Hawk’s team.  Joining a team usually nets you a signing bonus as well as some exclusive gear.  Getting your name heard is next so you’ll be doing plenty of camera and video work – practice jumping about like a well trained dog, doing tricks that somebody else calls on command and you’ll be just fine.  If you do enough of them and you’ll eventually get noticed by a sponsors.  Be the first kid on your block to have your own shoe brand!

Hardcore skaters aren’t completely without fame – moving down the Hardcore path let me to be featured in an old school skate zine called 7Ply and allowed me to use a whole new set of items in my Skate Lounge.  Again, the paths are not mutually exclusive, so you could earn all of the rewards in all three paths if you are inclined. 

When you start the game you’ll have access to a select few rigging items.  At any time you can hit the back button and place a small ramp to kick a new trick off or help get some vert, but you couldn’t even be close to calling yourself a rigger.  Hooking up with Jeff King will net you over 200 objects that you can place anywhere in the world, and that is really the essence of being a good rigger.  Riggers see the potential in every empty space.  Why skate around a column when you can loop around it with a rail?  Wouldn’t a quarter pipe look good at this location?  You build it – you skate it. 

I honestly found that the career skate path was the most rewarding for me.  I found that I didn’t enjoy the rigger path as much as I thought I would, but this could just be my play style.  The cool part is that my opinion on this doesn’t really matter – in Proving Ground you’ll make your own path.

It is really hard to gauge the value and replay value of a game this big.  There are three full storylines to run, classic goals, street challenges, and three difficulty levels, and that doesn’t even take into account the vast landscape of multiplayer.  We’ve talked at length about the other goals, so let’s dig into a few of the items we’ve not touched on yet.  No review would be complete without talking about the video editor.  At any time during the single player game you can pause the action and move directly into the video editor, allowing you to edit the last 30 seconds of gameplay.  You’ll be able to capture those one-in-a-million moves that you’d never be able to duplicate on your best day and use them in your own promo videos.  The editor allows you to add filters, various lenses, music from the soundtrack (that also can be clipped at will), and plenty of post-production effects to make the best video possible.  When you’ve pored over every inch of footage and set it up how you’d like, you can upload it for your friends to see and rate online. 

Speaking of online and friends – at any point you wish you can invite your friends to jump into your skate lounge and check out the goodies you’ve collected.  You can simply jam the items you’ve collected into your lounge, but the cool thing to do is to deck it out with the available themes, including Gothic, Club, Graffiti, Dojo, or the very disorienting Mirror.  If that isn’t enough swag, you can also purchase all manner of skatable objects such as furniture, cars, and even electronics such as massive wall-sized TVs that can play various full motion videos from the game.  While you can’t play your recorded videos, you can purchase all sorts of demo vids including a music video from The Rolling Stones. 

The online modes are a little bit different than in games past.  At any point during the game you can invite friends into your game to take on various challenges.  You’ll take your skater, skills and all, into the multiplayer world, so each player should be completely unique.  When you join you’ll drop right into free-skate mode as the host sets up one of the 7 game types.  Some of them are renames of previous modes, but the inclusion of multiplayer Nail the Trick makes for some awesome competition.  Additionally, you can also set up a multiplayer Skate the Line session where the first player tags objects and the second player has to match them.  Unlike a lot of games, the other players don’t have to sit around and watch as the other player pulls their tricks – all players are free to roam around in Free Skate mode allowing you to practice before you have to take your turn.  I really didn’t think the other Tony Hawk titles had a lot of staying power with multiplayer, but multiplayer Nail the Trick will change all of that.

I can’t imagine how the guys at Neversoft manage to introduce new features and still find the development time to stack more content on top of all of the previous games.  While I can’t say that all of the modes were a hit for me, there is a great deal to like in this new outing with Tony Hawk. 

Gaming Trend Score

87

1. Graphics: 85
2. Audio: 95
3. Controls: 90
4. Gameplay: 80
5. Value/Replay: 90
6. OVERALL:87