Tony Hawk’s Project 8
Neversoft offers the eighth installment in what’s become the reference point for all extreme sports video games with “Tony Hawk’s Project 8.”
There were some poor choices made by the team when they rolled out “Underground 2” and “American Wasteland,” but they got everything right with “Project 8.”
Tony wants to make an elite team of eight pro skaters and he’s scouting in your city to fill the roster. Make a character and skate in a seamless and enormous city as you work to prove you’re better than the other hundreds of skaters vying for the few slots.
The new Nail the Trick mode gives you the difficult option of creating a flip trick on the fly by kicking your board around with the controller’s analog sticks. For those who have followed the game for some time, it opens a whole new level to the vert points in a combo string.
The mastered gameplay is accompanied by great sound. The title’s over 50 licensed tracks — from such artists as Gnarls Barkly and Nine Inch Nails — play in the background as you perform countless tricks off of anything and everything in your environment.
Aside from taking out a few things from earlier installments, like the in-depth customization of your skater and the spraypaint tagging feature, this is a solid Hawk adventure and revitalizes the franchise on the next-gen consoles.
Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam
Strap on your protective gear and get ready to plummet, Tony’s got something new up his sleeve.
In what seems like a minigame from the normal series tweaked into its own title, “Downhill Jam” takes the normal Hawk skate mechanics and puts them into a high-speed downhill racer, reminiscent of the ever-popular SSX snowboarding games.
The graphics are a tad cartoonier and the in-game physics are modified, but it plays much like any other Tony Hawk game, only every level is started with a huge acid drop and you trick downhill as you either race or outscoreopponents.
The version for the DS is the best way to package a skating game for a handheld system. Small missions keep you interested, and special tricks can be started with flashing buttons that pop up on the touch screen.
The Wii version enables you to control your board with the Wii-mote, keeping controls fairly simple. The motion-sensitive board control can be a bit sticky and it may take a while for gamers to get used to.
While fun and a great diversion, it’s easily beaten by its cousin, “Project 8.” “Downhill Jam” makes for an amazing minigame, it just is not diverse enough to support its own game.
