 Review By: Andrew Joy |
Developer: | Neversoft |
| Publisher: | Activision | |
| Genre: | Extreme Sports | |
| ESRB: | Teen | |
| # Of Players: | 1-2 (8 online) | |
| Online Play: | Yes | |
| Accessories: | Xbox Live (online play) |
When it comes to the controls in Tony Hawk’s Project 8, Neversoft really went with a "No Button Left Behind" approach, and indeed you will use almost everything at least once. The right analog stick is used to control your camera, and the left one to move your character, while pushing forward and back on it very quickly will put your character into a manual. Pressing and holding the A button will cause your character to crouch, building up speed, and then ollie (jump) when you release it. Once in the air, you can press B to perform grab tricks, X for flip tricks, and Y for feats of balance, like a grind or lip trick, and a wall ride. Squeezing the left or right trigger will do a switch or revert, squeezing the left and right bumpers will cause your character to jump on and off the board, and squeezing all four of them together will force a bail. In most cases, those tricks can be performed in conjunction with the left analog stick and the other buttons for a number of different variations.
Of course, all of that is relatively par for the course, so now it is time to speak directly of that innovation I spoke of earlier. By know, you’ve likely heard all about Nail the Trick, probably the biggest (and perhaps most welcome) addition to the Tony Hawk series. By clicking down both analog sticks during a jump, the player enters a slow motion mode that allows them to control each foot independently with one of the analog sticks and maneuver the skateboard into a variety of tricks before they land. Despite reports to the contrary, it can also be used for normal tricks, like grinding and tail grabbing and all that stuff, helping to set up some of the massive combos you’ll need later in the game, but that requires you to fill up your special meter and then click only one of the analog sticks. Personally, I’ve never been much on the whole "bullet time" phenomenon that has wormed itself into seemingly every facet of the gaming world. It is just too frequent today, with practically every shooter having it in some form or another, whether it makes sense or not. However, occasionally the setup is fighting, like in Genji: Days of the Blade, where your character reaches a sort of Zen state while fighting and can defeat multiple enemies at once. The same is true for Tony Hawk’s Project 8, where the slow motion effects, despite little setup, actually have a positive influence on the gameplay, not to mention the fact that it looks fantastic, too!
If you’ve been carrying a torch for next-gen graphics, I’m not going to lie to you, Tony Hawk’s Project 8 isn’t going to wow you like Gears of War, which has more or less become the current benchmark of video game graphics. In fact, this game is a bit like your wife (or girlfriend or whatever): it’s the same old thing you know and love, but all gussied up for a night on the town (in this case, its next-gen début). However, despite that, I have to admit that I am quite pleased with the end result. For better or for worse, the game features quite a bit of bloom lighting, though it is used to good effect during the Nail the Trick, slow motion sequences. There aren’t a lot of options in the create-a-skater section that starts out the game, and a number of your competitors are pulled right from there, so you will see the same characters quite a lot. However, they have nice clean animations and look decent, so it’s not so bad. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for the cameos. As has been a problem with almost every Tony Hawk game I’ve played, whenever the developers try to make a likeness to a real person, it comes off looking quite awful, and in Project 8, all the celebrities look like they're made out of melting wax. One thing in particular that bothered me though, were the exaggerated physics – I once bailed, flew up in the air, and landed on the other end of the city, breaking 15 bones (and earning an achievement) in the process. Now, I understand that making a game means you have to cross that line between realistic and fun, but attaching four wheels to a piece of wood does not make it immune to the effects of gravity. As per usual, there is the typical assortment of love-it-or-hate-it music, but the game is filled with nice sound effects and a lot of quality voice work.
Even without any of the improvements mentioned above, the one thing this game has going for it is replay value. While even the least skilled among us could make a go of it to a certain extent, the true gamers will likely not stop until they have reached the top eight slots. But, apart from just Project 8, the entire series seems designed to push players to get better and better. With multiple skill levels, once you reach one benchmark, you’ll likely keep trying again and again until you reach the next one, no matter how many times you fail (and, yes, you will fail at some point). Few games can make people strive like that, and I have no doubt that, for me, some of the draw to continue was provided by the achievement points. However, if proving yourself against hundreds of NPCs isn’t exactly what you call a challenge, Project 8 also includes a number of fun multiplayer modes: There are no scores or goals in Free Skate; the player with the highest score in the end wins Trick Attack; in Score Challenge, the first player to reach a certain score is the winner; Combo Mambo and Combo Challenge task you with getting the highest combo score; performing tricks on obstacles will tag them in Graffiti; it's competitive combo challenges in the classic game of HORSE; and, finally, in Walls, you must perform combos to create walls that trap and eliminate your opponents. Because of limitations during the PS3’s development, online multiplayer, which supports up to eight people, is tragically exclusive to the Xbox 360 version of Tony Hawk’s Project 8. However, both versions include offline multiplayer. Sadly, the split screen completely mars your viewpoint and, on top of that, is limited to a paltry two players. On the upside, though, you won’t find many other differences between the online and offline versions of the games. The PS3 version does offer SIXAXIS tilt support for steering your skater, but, while we haven’t had a chance to try it ourselves, it hasn’t been garnering much praise and hardly seems to make up for the missing PlayStation Network support.
Bottom Line:
If Tony Hawk’s Project 8 stands as an example of what we can expect from the franchise in this new generation, then I say, bring it on. The game features improved graphics, innovative gameplay elements, robust multiplayer, and a massive, open world (once you unlock it). However, the series still has a ways to go before it is perfect, such as providing a compelling story and faces that don’t look like they’re from a wax museum on the sun. Still, compared to previous entries, this game has improved by leaps and bounds...or should I say, ollies?
| Pros: | Cons: | Final Score: |
|---|---|---|
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| 8.5 |
Posted: 2007-03-03 11:55:25 PST