Tony Hawk's Motion/Hue Pixel Painter

"A new spin to make you dizzy"

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, the prequel to this game, was probably one of the best Tony Hawk's games made for a long while, and easily the best one on a handheld. Sure, American Skateland was alright, but Proving Ground took everything that was right with Skateland, and improved it to the point where it's seriously on par with the main console versions, arguably as good in quality as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Four, or even Underground (my personal favourite of the series).

And then Motion takes all the hard work Proving Ground had done for the handheld versions, and gives it the two fingered salute.

You see, Proving Ground was an extension of the console version, and bar a couple of things (the goals that tried to replicate the board focus mode mainly), it succeeded in emulating the console versions success.

Motion however has decided that the best thing to do is to include a novelty gimmick. Namely motion controls. Now I don't really have much against motion controls, but on handhelds they don't always work. In particular, the Tony Hawk's series was built on button pressing, and switching to using a motion pack just doesn't sit well. Tilting the DS to turn your character, just makes things complicated. It doesn't help that the sensor is set so badly that to make a decent spin off a vert ramp means you practically need to turn the DS to it's side, making anding a bit tricky.

Furthermore your instinct to hold B at all times to crouch doesn't work here, and veterans of the series will have to re-learn to play the game entirely, even if they pick to use classic controls. Unfortunately even they require you to use the tilt motion. I could've lived with this game if there was a way to completely turn it off.

Which is ultimately the problem, the gimmick of tilting is just tacked on. At no point is it ever any more beneficial to the game to be able to tilt the DS to move. There's nothing to gain from this control system, over the more conventional control system, bar perhaps to justify the cost a bit better.

Which the game needs to do. The tilting aspect is the biggest thing promoted on the box. Understandable, as it really is the main feature of the game. But I did do a double take at the other promoted aspect: "Skateboard and Snowboard through over twenty mini challenges like Big Air". Now at first I was thinking "that's per level, that's alright." But I was wrong, that is actually the amount of goals in the game. Twenty goals. Which works out to five goals on each of the games four levels, two of which are dedicated skating, two are dedicated snowboarding.

That makes this the shortest Tony Hawk's game ever. Four levels is a joke. Proving Ground had eight, one of which was somewhat customisable. this just gives you two basic skate parks, and two basic mountains. Some of the goals do take place in areas outside the main levels, but two sets of narrow pipe courses do not count the same as proper and full skate parks.

The entire game is all but devoid of any content. The music, something which is usually highlight for me at least, is drab, boring, and entirely forgettable, all of it done by the same guy apparently, J Period. It's all dire Hip-hop style beats, with no lyrics, and nothing about it grabs. I know I've already compared this game to Proving Ground a lot, but music was another area Proving Ground was spot on.

Overall this game has just taken everything that was enjoyable about a Tony Hawk's game, and forgot to include it. This is a budget DS game, that's had motion control added, and is trying to emulate a Tony Hawk's game, without any success. This is really a Tony Hawk's game in name only, and is otherwise terrible.

Graphics: Functional, yet bland. Nothing interesting or special about them. 4
Gameplay: Terrible controls, and bland goals that don't change per level. 3
Lifespan: Might last you a couple of days, assuming you have the patience to do it all. 5

Overall, Tony Hawk's Motion is a four.

...

But wait, why have I given it a final score of 6 then? Well, although Tony Hawk's motion is awful, it's not the only game on this cartridge. There's a bonus game in the name of Hue Pixel Painter. At first I was expecting this to be a throwaway novelty, some kind of MSPaint for the DS, or something where you just keep doing the same sort of thing in the pursuit of a high score, like games of the seventies and eighties.

However, Pixel Painter is so much more than that. It's basically a puzzle game with a few platforming elements. You control Hue, a bright turquoise blob, who has to return colour to his world by jumping on cracks, and linking up blobs of paint around objects to colour them in, and make them fully 3D.

To do this, you roll Hue with the motion pack, tilting the DS like Hue was a metal ball in one of those frustrating maze puzzles. Which in essence, this game is, only more complicated in goals and hazards. It starts easy, first you jump on a crack, that makes several pools of paint appear, then you link them up. Everything inside the area gets coloured, turning objects from 2D to 3D, and revealing hidden objects.

Of course, the further you get, the further apart the blobs of paint are, and strategy is required to hit every area of paint. Sometimes you have to do them in a certain order, so that you can use the blobs of paint from one object to help go around another, and in some puzzles you need to use the 3D objects you make as platforms to get to higher areas in the level.

As always there are enemies trying to stop you, these are known as Drabs, and they all act differently, with some just following you, some releasing smaller Drabs that lick up your paint trails, and some that eat the paint blobs directly. They can all be stunned by jumping on, and beaten by surrounding them with paint.

For a bonus game there sure are a lot of levels, starting with a farm, and going through Egyptian themed, graveyard, haunted house, city, pirate islands, and so on. The differences aren't entirely cosmetic either, with deep water costing you your paint trail, ice making you slide worse than normal, and with pitfalls and fences making obstacles to trail paint around.

The levels all have a cartoony style that suits the game very well, and Hue himself is rather well animated, as are the Drab's. So much so, that you'd be forgiven for thinking that this is the main game on the double pack, and that Tony Hawk's Motion is just a conveniently licensed bonus. This theory is further supported in how much of the title screens are done, and just how varied the level themes are, and how good the music is.

This game also has better options for calibrating the motion pack, and allows you to set the sensitivity of it. This is something that Tony Hawk's Motion doesn't do, and means you can set it so that you don't have to tilt like a maniac just to make a sharp turn. the game doesn't tell you though, but set the bar to the left for less sensitivity, and to the right for more. It'll take you a few attempts to get it set how you'd like, but being given the option does make the game easier to play.

Pixel Painter does seem to have a sporadic difficulty curve, but part of this comes from the Drabs themselves. The ones that follow you are almost harmless, but good luck trying to kill the ones that eat the paint. Other levels do have level specific threats, yet none of them move, and really they're just a case of steering around. Since steering around stationary objects is harder than moving ones, it's the enemies themselves that are the hardest part of the game.

Pixel Painter is a genuinely fun, and charming game. It has a couple of issues, most annoyingly the game pauses to show any 2D objects become 3D, very distracting, especially when trying to navigate, and a few objects are placed a bit unfavourably for the camera to see, but otherwise this is competent.

Unlike Tony Hawk's motion, this game is a game designed to use tilt controls. While you could very easily graft normal D-pad controls on to this game, the game would immediately become very easy. The entire point of Hue's movement is that he moves like a marble in a maze would, and the challenge is that this is an interactive maze.

The fact that this is a bonus really makes you wonder if Activision simply had no faith in Hue alone to sell the motion pack? Was there some kind of emergency brainstorming session when the market research came back negatively?

If there is one main fault with Hue Pixel Painter, it's that it will always be seen as the bonus game that came with Tony Hawk's Motion. Most people will start with Motion, and will probably find it so bad, they never give this game a seconds thought. Many games that start life as bonuses are played less than the main game people brought that the bonus came with, and since Motion is just so bad, almost nobody will play Pixel Painter.

Which invariably means we'll never get a sequel to this gem of a game, unless Motion sells uberwell, and Activision realise it's for this game, and not because the motion controls work with Tony Hawk's.

Which is why I urge you not to buy this game new. Any sale of this game is an approval of motion controlled Tony Hawk's games. And while this game is worth owning, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground deserves a decent sequel more than Pixel Painter does. Which means I can't in good conscience recommend this bundle new. I can however (and strongly do) advise you to get this pack if you see it. Hue Pixel Painter is easily worth it, and hey, maybe you'll enjoy the bonus game Tony Hawk's Motion too...

Graphics: Cute and bright (when you've added the colour anyway). 6
Gameplay: Fun, and addictive, and surprisingly easy to learn, but hard to be good at. 7
Lifespan: Getting gold on every level is going to take you quite a while. 7

Overall Hue Pixel Painter is a 7

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/12/09

Game Release: Tony Hawk's Motion/Hue Pixel Painter (EU, 11/21/08)