Has Tony Lost His Magic Touch?

By Thomas Machuca

What's that I see, flying through the air with the gracefulness of roadkill? Is it a wayward cow, or perhaps a dragon? No, it's Tony Hawk plugging another transfer from hell!

Tony Hawk is back for his eighth and most realistic title in the franchise, Tony Hawk’s Project 8. 

I may offend some die-hard Tony Hawk fans out there by saying this, but I must admit that I only really played the first four games (those Pro Skater games brought me so much joy and anti-socialness) and from the feel of this latest game it's taking a step back to the roots of where it all began; bringing focus back to the essence of the game, skateboarding.

Or in the words of Lupe Fiasco says, kick, push.

There is a loose story behind the game which is that Tony Hawk is on a search for the eight best amateur skaters in the world to be part of his Project 8 team. He has stopped in your town, and it's up to you to get noticed by Tony and his disgustingly rich friends, so that you can get a spot on the team.

You are presented with story-specific missions throughout Career mode that are given to you by highlighted characters within each of the levels. For example, in new spot challenges you are tested on a specific skating skill in a certain spot. 

To progress through the game and see all the city and skate spots, you need to complete these missions, and there are a total of ten different and distinct areas in which you can show off your gnarly moves.

From the outset I've got to say that the level design could have been better; it seems slightly cluttered and the skating lines are too obvious. 

The levels are big, but not huge, and are filled with loads of challenges, secret tokens, skate gaps and more, which all help to improve your ranking from your initial position of 200 to the Top 8. Completing goals earn stat points, which can then be spent as you please to improve the athletic abilities of your custom skater.

Classic Tony Hawk mode is incorporated into the Career mode, so instead of having to play classic two-minute Tony Hawk challenges in a separate mode, you can now do so in the middle of the city, which is pretty cool, and a nice nostalgic trip back into 2002.

There are three levels of difficulty for every task you complete; Amateur, Pro, and Sick… OMG fully! The whole game can be easily finished just by scoring Amateur rankings for all tasks. Even Pro is a cake walk. The Sick difficulty at least gives you a challenge and with the inclusion of these difficulties it allows new players to enjoy themselves a lot more without the detrimental effect of getting annoyed because they suck.

A lot of flack has been copped by Project 8 as it has been dumbed down. A fine example of this are manuals. In previous titles, you would tap up-down (or down-up) to manual, now you can also just press a face button to instantly manual. The long time fans won't be happy about that, but it may entice new gamers to the Tony portfolio.

Not only this, but manual balance is also far too easy. Seeing as you use manuals to pull off huge combos, now it’s easier than ever to do this, which takes away some of the challenge.

I don’t know why, but this game is missing lots of features; online functionality, Create-A-Park, Create-A-Trick, Create-A-Design, and character creation is limited to just three character types. Why have less? I always thought more was better, especially when some of these would have taken no time at all to include, like online functionality as it was already supported on the previous title.

It may be missing lots of features, but there are new ones too; ‘Focus Mode’ and ‘Nail The Trick Mode’ are two of them. 

Focus Mode can be activated when your special meter is filled, just press a button to go into slow-motion focus control, which is like the slow-mo 'bullet-time' from Max Payne, but without the bloodshed. So now you can view every trick is super slow motion and land it cleanly, which is pretty cool. Just keep your special meter up and your combo going and you could stay in Focus Mode all day. 

Nail The Trick Mode is activated when you perform an ollie, then while in the air press down on both thumbsticks. You now have precision control of your skater’s feet in slow-motion. You use the left analogue stick to control the left foot and the right analogue stick to control the right foot. You can even move the left and right analogue sticks independently, or together, in any direction to perform a myriad of tricks. 

Simply use the left and right analogue sticks to control your feet to spin the board in the specified direction - it's a very neat feature. The tricks are relative to where your feet are, and simply release both left and right analogue sticks when the grip tape is up to land.

As stated previously, there is no online play, so you are left with two-player split-screen mode to play with friends. There are still the same good old modes – Trick Attack, Horse, and Graffiti. Or you can both just do your own thing in two-player Free Skate mode, which isn't as boring as it sounds.

The graphics are all you would expect from any Xbox game released nowadays - this is pretty good stuff, and the motion capture is wondrous, particularly when seen in slow motion. Also, Shaba/Neversoft have decided to stick with last year's engine on the Xbox and PS2 versions, which presents no problems. The game has a fast and  smooth frame rate, and has some decent animations and textures too. Strangely enough, it actually runs much smoother than the next-gen versions (PS3, Xbox 360), as it was not completely remade from the ground up like those ones and is not as resource hungry.

There are a whopping 50 licensed music tracks and they all complement the game quite well, giving you a bit more impetus to crank up your combo moves and attempt massive aerial tricks. You are sure to find a song in the list that you would have heard at least once before, and which you hopefully enjoyed as well, but even if this is not the case I’m sure there’s something that you won’t find too offensive to your ears that will help to grind some rails. Apart from the music list, the sound effects are good, which is a great thing as that is pretty much what you will be hearing most of the time (besides music) as there are almost no ambient noises. The bone crunching sound effects are quite realistic too.

Seven years and seven games later, Project 8 is what Neversoft has to show. Sadly, some people have called this game “the worst Tony Hawk game ever made”. I wouldn’t say that, but I see where they are coming from, as this game has been stripped of many of the features that made other titles in the series so enjoyable and featuring dumbed down controls just to name a few reasons. 

The way I look at it, they are trying to draw in new blood, those who have never entered the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater gaming universe before, and from this angle Project 8 is a great addition to the series. If you are new to Tony Hawk and love skateboarding, this is the game you want in you Christmas stocking. Also, ask for an Xbox 360 and get the next-gen version as, in the end, the current-gen versions are more an afterthought developed by Shaba Games - just one last attempt to cash in on the franchise - while the next-gen version has been built entirely from scratch with online play, hence, way sweeter in all aspects. Still, this a very good game on the Xbox, and well worth the investment.

Game: Tony Hawk's Project 8
System: Xbox
Players: 1-2
Online: No
Developer: Neversoft/Shaba Games
Distributor: Activision

Rating: 70%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)