So, I was at Disc Replay and noticed that they were selling both of these games for two bucks a piece. Being a big fan of the Tony Hawk games growing up, I had to check these out.
I've played through Project 8 but have not completed Proving Ground yet (both for the PS2).
Basically, Project 8 sucks. I just don't really know what the hell happened when they were making this game. When they made American Wasteland, they stuck to the formula that they had been using since Pro Skater 4 which worked. American Wasteland may not have been as good as some of the other games but it was still a good game. I had a lot of fun playing it.
Project 8 takes everything that worked in the older games, puts it in a shit grinder, and flings the pieces all over your living room and television.
To start, the plot is random as fuck. At least in the older Tony Hawk games, they didn't try to have a story so they had complete creative freedom. The Underground games had a basic story, I guess, if you could call it that. American Wasteland is basically the first Tony Hawk game to have a story. And, admittedly, it was basic and there were plot holes but, it was enjoyable and decent.
Project 8 makes no sense. Project 8 has a story that is simpler than American Wasteland but also has random stuff happen that is never explained. Most notably, in order to proceed to the school level, (because Tony Hawk games have never had a school level) you need to help a retired colonel collect government documents from the general capitol building in the general city you're in. He says that he needs to get these documents in order to get into the school. Why? I have no fucking idea. All that I know is that if kids had to jump through that many hoops to go to public school, no one would go.
On top of all of that, in order to collect the documents, you need to avoid touching red laser beams that, not only appear inside the capitol, but also all over the city center. Now, what kind of sense does that make!?
Not only that, but the detection is fucking broken on these laser beams. You'll ollie over a laser beam but the game will still say that you touched it. What a bunch of bullshit.
In each level, there's a person that offers up the classic goals like high score, collecting the s-k-a-t-e letters, etc. and they attempt to have a story around those things. Sometimes it kind of works. For instance, there's a politician that needs someone to create a ruckus in the city in order for their opponent in the next election to look bad. That makes general sense.
But then in the car factory level, the forman wants you to clean up the place by collecting skate letters and whatnot. How is riding around in the place the best way to clean it up? You're bound to create a mess while collecting the skate letters. Especially since the factory is running while you are collecting them!
I could probably go on and on about the plot. But the general plot is that you are one of the top 200 local skaters and you want to impress Tony Hawk's crew into letting you into his team of eight amatuer skaters. So, you go around doing stupid shit like you do in every other Tony Hawk game until you improve your rank from 200 to 8 (or above). As you gain ranks, more and more skateboard and shoe brands sponser you (though in reality, all that matters is the rank since gaining a sponser seems to have no impact on your progress in the game). When you beat the last level, which is incredibly easy, you join Tony Hawk's team and you unlock the last level (which is boring as shit).
You Tony Hawk Pro Skater players remember the Downhill Jam level in the first game? Well, this unlockable level is a really boring version of that. It's just a hill. It's a street that slopes down and there's some rails to grind. That's about it. Then, when you get to the bottom, it respawns you back at the top. Why even bother making the bonus level if it's going to suck ass!?
Speaking of the levels, most of them suck. Most of them are tiny and don't have much to offer as far as fun shit to skate on. For instance, the downtown level is fucking boring except for the goal when you have to manual up and down the bowling alley lanes and knock the pins over. Now that was pretty cool!
Ironically, the school level actually is pretty cool. Though, knowing that this is like the 500th school level they've made, it better be pretty damn good since they've had so much practice at it.
They also made an amusement park level which is, once again, not new. Though the rope bridge is pretty cool in this amusement park level, I will take the carnival level in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 any day,.
The controls are by far the worst part of this game. Seriously, all they had to do was keep them the same as before. But, they really just had to change them all around, didn't they? They are fucking sluggish as hell! There is a considerable delay between when you press the button combination on the controller and when they actually start doing the trick. This is incredibly frustrating! Also, there is a delay between when you start doing a trick and when they register that you start doing it. For instance, I had trouble passing the tutorial level because the damn game wouldn't register that I had actually done a wallride. My character in the game was doing a wallride but the scoring system refused to acknowledge that I was doing it. Fucking stupid.
Related to that, this causes a problem with any kind of distance goal that you need to complete (grinding and manualing). Anyone who has played Tony Hawk with me before knows that I am very good at manualing. Well, I had a ton of problems with the manual distance goals. Why? Well, because whenever I started manualing before a marker, it kept registering as past the marker. So, in order to get the game to actually register that I had started manualing before the marker, I basically had start manualing about five yards or so before the start line. That's fucking ridiculous!
Also, the focus control is so laggy that half the time it doesn't even go into focus! Instead of pressing L3, you basically have to hold it down for a little less than a second for it to work. This is a long time if you're trying to go into focus while manualing or grinding!
The camera controls are junk! The camera is so disorienting and impossible to control that it gives me motion sickness. Everytime you turn around, the camera jolts into a position that you weren't expecting and when you try to correct it with the right stick, the camera just bounces all over the place. I don't know how they messed this up since the camera controls in prior Tony Hawk games were pretty solid.
Amongst the plethora of controls that they fucked up, they did improve them in a couple of ways. You can now go into a manual using the square button or the down up command from before. There are times when it's more convenient to use the square button. But not very often. Also, there's the new Nail the Trick mode which allows you to control your feet with the right and left sticks while doing flip tricks. This was pretty cool, even if frustrating to get a hang of.
The music in this game is disappointing. Most other Tony Hawk games had killer soundtracks. This one has a pretty lame one mostly filled with generic punk. There are only two songs done by major punk artists, one of those being the Ramones and the other The Transplants. It's not horrible, just not nearly as good as the other games.
In this game, you can't change your appearance for shit. I know it's something that really isn't relevant to the game play but when you only have the option of picking from tool 1, tool 2, tool 3, tool 4, tool 5, tool 6, and have pretty limited options when changing their appearance, it gets tiring staring at that same dumbass that you couldn't edit earlier.
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So far, Proving Ground has been a slight improvement from Project 8. But, not much.
The music is way better in this game than in Project 8. In fact, I would say that it is one of the best Tony Hawk soundtracks. It includes The Pretender by the Foo Fighters, Breed by Nirvana, Clash City Rockers by The Clash. It also has The Sex Pistols, Nine Inch Nails, and others that I'm probably not thinking of at the moment.
One thing that I hate is that they completely changed the balance meter. Instead of a display that takes up part of the screen, it's a white, foggy arch that takes up the whole damn screen! I can't stand it. But, I guess it could be worse.
One thing that's cool about this game is that there are goals where you use the game's level editor to set up ramps or whatever you need in order to accomplish the goal. That was pretty cool, innovative, and a cool addition to a good series.
They also added Nail the Grab, which is similar to Nail the Trick in Project 8.
They also added the Aggro Kick? (I think that's what it's called. I can't quite remember!) But basically, if you press the R1 button in rhythm while skating, you can get huge ass speed quickly. This is cool because in past Tony Hawk games, there were only a few and, generally, inconvenient ways to gain massive speed.
Since I haven't finished it yet, I can't really say much about the story. Thus far, the story seems okay. Kind of feels a bit to serious and realistic for a Tony Hawk game though. When I play Tony Hawk games, I generally expect sillyness. But, maybe it's a change for the better.
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