Tony Hawk's Project 8

"Fun for a while, but probably not going to make your top ten..."

Tony Hawk's Project 8 tries a few new things in an attempt to improve the series. Honestly, there isn't a whole lot for them to improve on, and as a consequence there's isn't a ton of new stuff in the game. What is added works surprisingly well, but it's what's not in the game that'll make you put it down.

Graphics are okay. They're not spectacular by any means, but they're decent. The levels, and objects in them, are well textured and decently modeled, and everything does the job it's supposed to do. Some of the parts look really good, particularly the slopes, halfpipes, and other "skating" parts, but many of the others, like houses and roads, look odd or out of place. People look weird to say the least, and probably could have done with some extra polygons, but I don't feel like they get in the way of actually playing the game.

Creation modes are horrible. Nothing is left, and I really don't see a single reason for it. You can no longer create a skate park, which is disappointing. Worse yet, you're left with very few choices in create a character. If you're looking to create a punk rocker, a rapper, or a child, then you'll be able to, but that's it. The game actually makes you choose one of these categories, and then provides you with a small amount of modifications to the base models, including a pitiful choice of 3 heads per style. There's no way to make a character who looks like a business man, or frat boy, or even Tony Hawk. You can't make your character fat or tall, you can't load a picture of your own face, and you can't choose hair that looks normal, all things that were in previous games. If this were the first create-a-skater mode, it would be acceptable, but it isn't, and this should be much better.

The gameplay is the same as always, and it's fun. It feels a bit faster and smoother, so it takes some getting used to if you're used to the older games, but once you get back into it, it's fun. The additions to the gameplay are very welcome -- you now manual by simply pressing square, which makes it much easier to continue combos. Combos are continued automatically even if you're not performing a trick using the same timer used when you left the board in previous versions, which is helpful when continuing combos over tricky areas. The game also displays your balance meter between tricks. The balance point always carried over to the next rail in the same trick, but now you can see where it is before you jump into a new grind, preventing your from falling immediately because it was way to the left at the end of the last rail.

The new Nail-the-Trick feature is surprisingly fun, and makes hitting tricks fresh. You don't have to use it, really, but after doing nothing but press left+square in previous games, it's nice to have a new system. It works well once you get the hang of it, and once you get good it makes hitting big tricks feel a bit more rewarding.

Story mode is okay to play through once, but I doubt anyone will be going through it a lot. The story is dull, but that's nothing new, really. What brings the story mode up is the goal system, and it's great. Instead of picking a difficulty, most goals have 3 levels of completion. It allows you to play through the game and attempt all three levels of each goal, but continue even if you don't perfect each one. Timed goals are back, as well, and you can take a stab a classic-mode-styled 2 minute runs with goals like collecting SKATE and COMBO letters and gaining high scores. It's nice to have these goals integrated into story mode, instead of making us play a separate game.

My only problem is that the goals usually make no sense at all. Some of them, like when a girl wants to photograph you doing tricks, make sense, but the game doesn't take the picture at the right time -- you usually end of with a picture of your skater landing. Others make no sense at all, like when a real estate agents asks you to clean up the neighborhood of cardboard snowmen when she could CLEARLY do it herself. If you're able to ignore these silly aspects of story mode, you'll enjoy the game -- they don't affect the gameplay at all.

Overall, the game improves a bit in gameplay, but the severe lack of customization drags it down big time. The story mode is all fine and dandy, but when I can't make myself or any of the characters I usually make in video games, AND I can't make new skate parks to play around in, I know I'm not going to be playing much after I beat the game. Once you play around in the levels and get to know them really well, you'll run out of things to do, which is a shame.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/16/06