Gaming Trend

Gaming Trend Review

by Keith Schleicher

It used to be that sports games only came out with a new version each and every year.  A couple of new features and the updated rosters for the sports teams were all that was needed to get new versions out the door and some guaranteed sales for video game players who were also fans of the sport.  The Tony Hawk series has come out for their ninth iteration, but they don’t have the advantage of slapping a new roster update in the game and changing the year at the end.  That’s not to say that the series hasn’t had innovation.  New moves have been added every year, storylines have been created, and the multiple skill levels for challenges have been added as well.

This year Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground (THPG) is the newest iteration in the series.  The title Proving Ground gives the idea that you have an area where you set yourself up for great things, or you end up failing to accomplish greatness and have to star over.  Does THPG accomplish the great things that it sets out to, or does it crash into the pavement.

THPG is the second Tony Hawk game to come out on the PS3 and the third to come out for the Xbox 360.  At this stage of the life cycle we should be seeing games that really take advantage of the power of these systems instead of games that look like they were ported from the PS2.  While the graphics have improved, they still don’t look like they are as crisp as what these consoles can produce.

The virtual characters in THPG look good compared to their real-life counterparts considering what the graphics engine can produce.  The textures give tattoos and body structure to the characters, as well as a sense of their individual style.  The character you crate has plenty of options too, including hair style, skin tone, eyes, nose, and clothes.  Your board can be customized as well, and new textures become available as you progress throughout the game.

Animations are important in a game like this, and having a skater that moves stiff as a board doesn’t immerse you into the game.  Neversoft has done much to improve on this.  While grinding the board, the skater has more animation than before.  Instead of having a gauge with an arrow showing how far to the left or right the character is, indicators on the side of the screen show the balance.  This lets you focus more on the skater, although the guides on the sides do help.

When you are introduced to a new goal, there is an in-engine scene to set up why you are doing the goal that you are attempting.  They move fairly accurately, but some of the movements don’t feel natural.  The mouth and eye movements really don’t match the speaking and feels creepy at times.

The backgrounds have textures that look good, but they are blurry and lack some detail that could make the game look much better.  You are also in these sprawling cities that should be fairly heavily populated.  Instead they look like there has been some kind of outbreak with only a few people sticking around.  You are given the ability to push around bystanders, but there really aren’t that many to push around.

Neversoft has always done soundtracks for the Tony Hawk games right, and THPG is no exception.  Before skateboarding became mainstream, it had a rebellious attitude.  They have been able to grab artists that capture that attitude.  The soundtrack doesn’t feature that prominently into the scheme of the game.  It’s not that noticeable in the game like they were in the original games.

The game features real-life skaters more prominently than before.  Neversoft has gotten the skaters to provide their lines.  While they don’t have that many lines and they won’t be nominated for any Academy Awards, they do a much better job than some actors who phone-in their lines because they are doing it “only” for a video game.

Since THPG is about skateboarding, nailing the sound of the board is important.  You can hear the board hitting the cement or metal while grinding against the board.  You hear your landings after performing a big air.  You can tell the difference between landing on cement like in an empty swimming pool and the echo from landing on a wood ramp.

They say that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  While THPG has a few changes from previous games, those who have played any of the Tony Hawk games will feel comfortable with the controller.  Movement and balance is handled with the left analog stick.  Holding X gathers speed and releasing performs an Ollie in the air.  This is one of the most basic parts of skating and performing tricks.  The rest of the face buttons are used for grinds, grabs, and flips.  To run around, all you need to do is hit R1 and L1 at the same time.  These controls are tight, as timing has always been the most important part of controlling your skater.

The “Nail” tricks are performed by clicking in both analog sticks, holding them down, and letting the left stick act as the left foot and the right stick act as the right foot.  While Nail the Trick was implemented last year, this year Neversoft added “Nail the Grab” and “Nail the Manual.”  While performing a Nail the Trick move, if you press down L2 before moving the sticks, you control grab movements with the analog sticks.  To perform “Nail the Manual” just press R2 instead.  The only issue with this is that holding down the analog sticks while moving them isn’t easy, and with the analog sticks so close, it’s easy to bump your thumbs together at times.  This is more a fault with the design of the controller and not the game controls themselves.

THPG takes the idea of the open world environment and expands on it.  Similar to Project 8, you have people who have different goals for you to perform.  Each goal has an Amateur, Pro, and Sick level.  While the Amateur and some of the Pro feats are easy to accomplish on the first couple of tries, you’ll need to increase your stats to achieve Sick tricks.  However, the challenges you do depend on which path you take.

The biggest feature of THPG are the three different skater paths.  Career skaters are the ones people are probably most familiar with.  They get their pictures on magazine covers and compete professionally.  Hardcore skaters are the skaters that are only looking out for number one.  They skate how they like and they don’t care how anybody else feels about it.  They are the rebels in the skating world.  The Riggers are skaters who like to try to find areas and create a new area to skate in.  Sometimes it is a matter of putting up a couple of boards to reach a pipe to grind, while other times it will take constructed ramps to get over a car cleanly.

While there are three different skater paths you can choose, they aren’t mutually exclusive from each other.  If you want you can follow a particular skater style path, or you can go through all three paths simultaneously and live out the best of all three worlds at once.  To get the goals you just need to move right to a pro skater and they’ll tell you what they want you to do to prove yourself.  As you advance in the Career lifestyle you’ll get sponsorships and become part of a skating team.  The Hardcore skaters don’t have the same following, but progressing there gives you acclaim amongst the other Hardcore.  Riggers expand the number of items available to them.  At first you only have a couple of ramps to help you create your area, but as you go down the Rigger path new items become available that let you use your imagination in the environment.

One of the best new moves in THPG is the Aggro Kick in the Hardcore path.  By hitting R1, you give yourself a major push off your leg.  As you get into a rhythm, you gain more and more speed.  This helps you to make jumps into new areas that you wouldn’t have been able to reach.  This innovation requires timing and really rewards you for nailing the move right.  The Aggro Kick quickly becomes an important part of your repertoire of moves.

As mentioned before, Nail the Trick has expanded to include Nail the Grab and Nail the Manual.  The Matrix-like effect when going into the “Nail” moves gives you a sense of how much your hands and feet change to make the board spin and flip to create a trick.  The sense of time slowing down and speeding up progresses naturally when you successfully complete the trick, but if you don’t get the trick done you jolt abruptly back into real time, which is something that skaters probably feel when they hit the pavement.

The Nail the Grab lets your fingers do the walking, so to speak, instead of your feet.  When you Nail the Grab you hold onto the board with one hands and tweak the board with the other.  You can even do hand transfers if you like.  Nail the Manual is similar, except the Manual is used for linking combos.  You just need to be sure you keep your balance while performing this.  If you can link tricks for massive combos, you can use that footage for a tape that can be shared with others who have THPG.

If you are a classic Tony Hawk fan, you’ll be happy to see arcade machines strewn around the area.  These arcade machines have the old school objectives, like grabbing S, K, A, T, E in the level.  If you’ve been with the series for a while, these will bring back some memories from the initial outings.

Having three different career paths is one of the best additions to THPG, and it should be easy for anyone to find the kind of skating style that they enjoy.  With the classic objectives, the Aggro Kick, and the new Nail implementations, there are a lot of ways to be able to enjoy THPG and keep the game fun without getting frustrated.

The three skater paths and classic objectives make the game feel big, especially since there are three cities recreated to skate in.  That doesn’t take into account a couple of other new features and the multiplayer.

The Skate Lounge is your personal place where you can arrange skate pieces for decoration or for recreation.  It is almost like Tony Hawk’s Second Life.  You can purchase new items, skate around, or sit down and watch videos you have purchased from the store on your big screen TV.  You will get items from completing goals from each of the skater paths, so others will be able to check your progress and compare which objectives you have completed.

Nine different games are available in multiplayer.  Horse, Walls, Graffiti, Combo Challenge, Combo Mambo, Trick Attack, and Score Challenge all make return appearances.  New this year is multiplayer online Nail the Trick and Skate the Line.  Nail the Trick has you set up a kicker to launch off of and then go into a Nail the Trick move.  High score wins the game.  Skate the Line lets you map out a specific line for other skaters to follow.  The skaters perform tricks along that line and the highest scoring combo on the line wins.

While you might have been able to see yourself create massive combos, you haven’t been able to share that with others.  Now you can thanks to the new video editor.  You can pause the action and edit the last 30 seconds of your skating.  While just sending video of that would have been cool, Neversoft has gone above and beyond the call of duty and let you change the camera angle, add effects like fisheye lenses and color filters, and put in a music track.  Once you are done you can upload the video and share it with friends.  You can fiddle with this option for a long time because you’ll want to get that video “just right.”

When I got an early look at this title, there was some mumbling about Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground being more of the same.  It’s difficult to try to keep the series fresh by just adding a few moves and a couple new skaters each year.  Once you see the entire package, THPG really has a lot added to it.  With the new Aggro Kick, three skater paths, a surprisingly powerful video editor, and more online multiplayer support, THPG is one of the best Tony Hawk games to come out in several years.  If you have every version of Tony Hawk, then you’ll be impressed with how much has been added.  If you used to play it but haven’t purchased any of the next gen titles, then it’s high time to get reacquainted with Tony Hawk again.

Gaming Trend Score

87

1. Graphics: 86
2. Audio: 90
3. Controls: 87
4. Gameplay: 85
5. Value/Replay: 88
6. OVERALL:87