Tony Hawk's Project 8

"Clever title or laziness? I'll be the judge."

Four games on the old generation, five games on the current generation, and so far there are 2 available for the next-gen 360. You gotta wonder how much creativity there is left. Well luckily I'm here to report just that. It's the 8th Tony Hawk game! So how is skateboarding this time around? Let's take a look.

STORY
Now in Tony Hawk's Underground, Underground 2, and American Wasteland, we were introduced to storylines. Not in general but in the skateboarding series of course. And for the most part they did a good job. And while Project 8 seems to have a storyline, it's really nothing more than the Pro Skater games with narration and characters. I mean the overall idea is that you're an up and coming skateboarder who wants to prove himself. And lucky for you Tony Hawk just happens to be in town looking for some talented skaters to take part in Project 8. He wants to gather 8 pro skateboarders and turn them into legends. So you have to prove to the Hawkman that you have it what it takes. And how do you prove that? By doing mundane tasks and impressing the pros of course! There's no development at all so the story is lame.

GRAPHICS
Now I've been hearing that this game looks amazing and it's so incredible and it's the best looking game yet. But upon actually playing it, I would disagree. The first thing to take note of are how weird the pros look. Or heck everyone in general. They all have these weird distorted faces that just don't seem human at all. Everyone looks too....how should I put it....mutated for their own good. I think everyone looks ugly in this game. And as for the environment, it looks ok. It isn't anything that's going to blow you away. Another thing to take note of is that the game takes place in one small city. There are no other environments in the game at all. So if you want a suburban place with a skatepark and a school, good for you! But it's no different than anything else we've seen in previous Hawk games.

SOUND
Right off the bat I have to mention how quiet this game is. Nothing volume can't fix but compared to every other 360 title I've played, this one is just really low. And I checked to see if the sound options were just kept down, but no, they were at the top! It becomes obvious that the game's quiet when you gain achievements or someone comes online and the signal sound overlaps everything by a big difference. But as to the actual content, the music has always been heavy in punk, rock, and hip-hop. This time around the soundtrack didn't really do anything for me. And usually these Hawk games have catchy tunes. But this time it was just....meh. As for voice acting, the pros all supply their voices and do their best to sound enthusiastic. Too bad they don't sound like they are. And the voices that aren't done by the pros, they are so over the top that they're just annoying. As for everything else, it does it's job well. Nothing special though.

GAMEPLAY
And now we journey into what I believe to be the most lackluster Tony Hawk game yet. For our 8th installment the game continues the idea from American Wasteland and sets you into one major environment that you travel freely with no load times at all. It has a capitol building so I guess it's supposed to be like Washington D.C. This town you're in isn't that massive. Seriously by the time you unlock the last section in the game, you can totally have the area memorized and in your head. And unlocking the last area of the town can take a day or two. LA in American Wasteland was actually bigger than the city in this game. And you know what? THAW had other environments including it's big LA. Project 8 has only it's town.

Which comes to one lame problem, that of the lack of game modes. Remember Classic mode which has a whole bunch of levels where you collect the SKATE letters and get high scores and all that? Gone. Remember the create a park feature where you could design your own playhouse? Gone. How is this next-gen? You can't take away modes that have come to be expected! Now while features of classic mode are present in the game, it's only in the big town area that you do other missions in, so it's nothing exciting. They have a free skate mode, but really free skate is just a way for you to play as pros in the town. Create a skater is still in the game...but they butchered it!

Right off the bat of career mode they make you create a character. And I'm fine with that. That is until I discover how they do it this time. They make you choose from 5 styles of skaters. 3 guys, a woman, and a child. Yes you can actually play as a child in this game now. But here's the problem. If you're a guy who wants his avatar to be perfect (like me), this just doesn't work. One of the guy styles is the punk style. That's the only style of character who can get the mohawk and spiked bracelets and the like. Now if I want punk clothing but I don't want the punk hairstyles, I have no other solution. It was much easier in the previous games when all you had to do was pick from EVERYTHING, and not 5 styles. Oy.

The whole point of career mode is to impress everyone in the town by doing their tasks and showing off your tricks so that you can move up in the rankings and be eligible to join Project 8. You start out as rank 200 and must get into the 8. So basically you skate around town, find people glowing orange, do their tasks, ascend in rank. The end. That's all you do in this game. Sometimes you're trying to reach a certain score, sometimes you're impressing 3 groups of crowds, or maybe you're trying to get through dangerous terrain. But it's always the same tasks they send you on. As to be expected, it makes the game pretty boring after awhile. Another thing to note is that many missions have 3 ways to do it. The amateur way, the professional way, and the sick way. Sick tasks are so ridiculously hard that any fans thinking these games were lacking difficulty, will be pleasantly surprised. The better the performance, the higher your rank ascends.

As for the actual skateboarding, it's like it was last year in THAW. You can still get off your board and climb obstacles. You still manual and grind and revert and all that junk. Though we are missing the bert slides and flatland abilities that were in THAW. The new big thing about this year is the "Nail the Trick" feature. Basically by clicking both of the analog sticks in, time slows down considerably and we focus in on the board and your skater's feet. At this point you can now use the analog sticks to move the feet and maneuver a trick. It's a neat idea but honestly I think it takes away from the hyper action. You'll be listening to the music, gaining speed from your grind or constant halfpipe flying or whatever, but then you activate "Nail the Trick" and time gets slowed and the music goes away and the action just gets halted. That adrenaline rush you're on just gets diminished. And to be honest it's not that great. It'll cause more accidents than you'd like and I prefer the old fashioned method where my action doesn't get cut.

Before bails had their own hilarious animations and you could actually release anger and frustration and destroy your board for extra points. They took out the anger part and now the bails are just ragdoll physics gone wrong. And this is a bad thing. See you'll be spending your time in one halfpipe and doing okay for the most part. Then you bail once and your character apparently loses all the weight in his body, and he'll fly like 50,000 feet away from the halfpipe you're in. I'm serious! The bails are awful. They actually make your character fly away sometimes when they bail. I always liked it before when you bailed off of a roof, and you fell to the street below. If you bail on a roof on this game, you'll fly forward like the whole area and bounce around when you actually do land. It's stupid and it's really annoying when the bails force you away from your favourite point-gathering spots of the skatepark or whatever. They actually incorporate bails into mini-games for missions but they're not fun to play.

Another complaint I have with the game? The score display. Before it was in the middle, next to your character, and you didn't have to look far to know how you were doing. Guess where they put it in this game? In tiny font in the bottom right corner of the screen! Are you kidding me!? Who thought that was a good idea? I find myself bailing because I totally look away from the action just to see how my tricks are working out. Project 8 has a lotta problems. Normally I find these games fun but this version has far too many flaws and just isn't the quality game it used to be. They made these new changes to things that never needed change because they were perfect as is. I mean the game is okay to play, but personally I found it really boring, really repetitive, and there's just a lotta issues that bothered me about the game.

IN THE END...
Project 8 needed more polish. It may look better than American Wasteland but it's quality just isn't up to par. Repetitive gameplay, lack of features, and a stupid bail system don't appeal to Clement's liking. I would avoid this one and wish them better luck for the future.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/29/07