There are few people that do for a sport what Tony Hawk did for the sport of professional skateboarding. Many years ago skateboarding was an underground sport that few people in mainstream society cared two hoots about. Along came Tony Hawk and the X-Games and skateboarding is now a multi-million dollar industry sport that encompasses all types of media; television, movies, and videogames. Tony Hawk videogames started out pretty basic, ran a few years like that then moved on to the “underground” series which was new, but left many gamers wanting a lot more. Developer Neversoft has decided to mix in the new with the old in their second installment of the Tony Hawk series on the Xbox 360. Tony Hawk’s Project 8 is easily one of my favorite games in the series but it could have been better. The good parts of Project 8 outweigh the small bad ones without much effort. Overall the game is a fun single player experience, with some props to the original games, and a decent multiplayer mode that will add a few hours to the longevity of the game.
Project 8 includes a storyline this year which starts off with you, the gamer, building a character to skate with. This build-a-skater mode is extremely limited this year and a vast disappointment from what we have come to expect from next-gen games. The reason you are building a character from scratch instead of starting off as Tony Hawk is because this time around Tony is off scouring the country to find the best 8 amateur skateboarders to join his elite project. Once your skater is born you must get him signed by an advertiser and then attempt to pull off some mad tricks/missions to get enough popularity to show up on Tony Hawk’s radar. Anyone familiar with classic TH games will instantly notice the expansive size of the city that this game takes place in. The city is built of ten “zones” which all interconnect with no load times; you actually have the ability to do tricks through all ten zones without stopping. Within each ten zones there are different missions and tricks to complete to clear that zone, there are also stores, pros, etc. Speaking of other skating pro’s, everyone who is anyone in the skating world is in this game. Well known industry personalities, everyone from Bam Margera to Ryan Sheckler make appearances in Project 8, some more than others, and most of the challenges have three different ratings; amateur, pro, and sick.
After spending hours playing Project 8, I was still only able to get pro on most of the challenges, that’s what I call replay value. Once you finish the “mini-challenges” (which consist of the old school type challenges from Tony Hawk 1 such as the word S-K-A-T-E and others) you have moved high enough in the public eye to face the boss of each zone. This pro-challenge is much more difficult than the basic missions throughout the zones and will really test your skills as a virtual skater. A feature known as “nail the trick” is the something new that Activision is touting as revolutionary in Project 8. Simply put it is an awesome new trick mode that will quickly become something to show off your skills in. Basically you go off a ramp, tap in both thumbsticks and your skater will enter a “bullet-time” sequence where you can flip and spin your board beneath your feet. There are many things that go into your air-time tricks besides just what you are doing with your board. Launching at the exact time and holding the right buttons will help you pull off insane tricks. The other controls in Tony Hawk’s Project 8 are simple enough and anyone that has spent even a few minutes with a TH game before will feel right at home with Project 8. I always felt that the Playstation controller was perfect for the Tony Hawk games and I still stand by that today.
It is true that the Xbox 360 version of this game controls the best of any game not on the Playstation, however it still just feels as if something is missing, maybe the dual analog sticks side-by-side? Ever since the first Tony Hawk game was released many years ago the thing that has stood out for being intuitive was the level design, this is lacking in Project 8. The levels are huge, I will give the developers that, but it seems like Activision didn’t push the developers to the next level, literally. It’s not the size that bothers me it’s the repetitiveness that does it in. The schoolyard, factories, skate parks, suburban areas; its all been seen before in Tony Hawk games and we have ramped off anything there is to ramp off of. Considering the new enhanced storyline it would have been nice to see Neversoft create some all new environments for us to explore. The gameplay design of Project 8 is still a nice step up from previous games but I really wish the game offered us more in terms of new features.
