Grounds for Re-Evaluation
Is Tony Hawk's Proving Ground a step forward or a tumble backwards? We take a hands-on peek to find out.
Published: September 10, 2007
For whatever reason, we hadn't had a chance to actually play the latest Tony Hawk game, Proving Ground, until late last week. Luckily, Activision gave us a few hours to mess around, even play online against other folks on the PS3, and generally get a feel for what series creator Neversoft is trying to do with the franchise.
The short version is that Proving Ground, even in the short time that we spent with an unfinished build, is an order of magnitude better than the experience that was had by anyone unfortunate enough to play Project 8. Gone are the weird hitches whenever something happens with the PlayStation Network (and the game's actually online, gasp!), but the framerate has also been smoothed. In fact, Proving Ground is more or less identical (minus Achievements) to the 360 version, which is as it should be, but after the last game, the gulf between the two was wide indeed.
The longer version... well, for that you're just going to have to read on, aren't you?
Let's get one thing out of the way right at the outset because it's going to become an increasing point of contention among long-time fans of skateboarding games (or, uh, at least the Tony Hawk franchise, which is nearly one and the same): Proving Ground and skate, EA's skateboarding competition, are worlds apart. God, yes, they share an eerily similar camera position and general visual tone to things, and they're both mash-ups of three cities (Philly, Baltimore and D.C. for PG, San Fran, Vancouver and Barcelona for skate), but in terms of actual play style, Proving Ground sticks firmly to its guns while expanding on ideas introduced in the last game.
The result is a game that's certainly nowhere near as fresh as skate, but the speed, setting and lines in the game were an instant reminder that as far as its moved from the glory days of the THPS games, Tony Hawk isn't going anywhere, and there's more than enough room for two kinds of skating games in the genre. And with that, we leave our comparisons behind (at least until the game's review).
Proving Ground -- at least on the surface -- feels like being transplanted from the skateboarding dream world of Project 8 into something a little gloomier, a little more gritty and based a bit more of reality (or at least actual geographic locations). Rather than a single story-driven path like the last few Hawk games, Proving Ground instead gives you three basic options to chart your path to fame and fortune -- however small or large you make it.
The first path is that of the Career skater, and will be most familiar to those that played through those last few games' stories; you start out as an up-and-comer, but after landing a handful of sponsorships and bagging covers of magazines, you quickly rise to the top and grab a name for yourself among the casual skating public. This is the path to glory and mass-market fame, but the other two options will get you cred with other skaters rather than fan clubs and TV commercials.
The Rigger is someone who essentially sees the entire world as a skate park. Sure, it might need a little... "coaxing" here and there -- maybe a fence needs to get knocked down or a half-pipe would look better in the middle of a busy road -- but the ingredients for some absolutely sick looking lines are little more than a button press and a bit of genius design away.
Since you can in effect edit the same world you've been skating through in real-time, Neversoft has built an intuitive system that uses the shoulder buttons and analog sticks to rotate, select, scale and position dozens of pre-set objects. Drop a massive rail through half a city, introduce new acid drop points into the world where before there was nothing. It's easily the most creative route to go, but it won't net you anywhere near the kind of recognition of the other story paths.
The short version is that Proving Ground, even in the short time that we spent with an unfinished build, is an order of magnitude better than the experience that was had by anyone unfortunate enough to play Project 8. Gone are the weird hitches whenever something happens with the PlayStation Network (and the game's actually online, gasp!), but the framerate has also been smoothed. In fact, Proving Ground is more or less identical (minus Achievements) to the 360 version, which is as it should be, but after the last game, the gulf between the two was wide indeed.
The longer version... well, for that you're just going to have to read on, aren't you?
Let's get one thing out of the way right at the outset because it's going to become an increasing point of contention among long-time fans of skateboarding games (or, uh, at least the Tony Hawk franchise, which is nearly one and the same): Proving Ground and skate, EA's skateboarding competition, are worlds apart. God, yes, they share an eerily similar camera position and general visual tone to things, and they're both mash-ups of three cities (Philly, Baltimore and D.C. for PG, San Fran, Vancouver and Barcelona for skate), but in terms of actual play style, Proving Ground sticks firmly to its guns while expanding on ideas introduced in the last game.
The result is a game that's certainly nowhere near as fresh as skate, but the speed, setting and lines in the game were an instant reminder that as far as its moved from the glory days of the THPS games, Tony Hawk isn't going anywhere, and there's more than enough room for two kinds of skating games in the genre. And with that, we leave our comparisons behind (at least until the game's review).
Proving Ground -- at least on the surface -- feels like being transplanted from the skateboarding dream world of Project 8 into something a little gloomier, a little more gritty and based a bit more of reality (or at least actual geographic locations). Rather than a single story-driven path like the last few Hawk games, Proving Ground instead gives you three basic options to chart your path to fame and fortune -- however small or large you make it.
The first path is that of the Career skater, and will be most familiar to those that played through those last few games' stories; you start out as an up-and-comer, but after landing a handful of sponsorships and bagging covers of magazines, you quickly rise to the top and grab a name for yourself among the casual skating public. This is the path to glory and mass-market fame, but the other two options will get you cred with other skaters rather than fan clubs and TV commercials.
The Rigger is someone who essentially sees the entire world as a skate park. Sure, it might need a little... "coaxing" here and there -- maybe a fence needs to get knocked down or a half-pipe would look better in the middle of a busy road -- but the ingredients for some absolutely sick looking lines are little more than a button press and a bit of genius design away.
Since you can in effect edit the same world you've been skating through in real-time, Neversoft has built an intuitive system that uses the shoulder buttons and analog sticks to rotate, select, scale and position dozens of pre-set objects. Drop a massive rail through half a city, introduce new acid drop points into the world where before there was nothing. It's easily the most creative route to go, but it won't net you anywhere near the kind of recognition of the other story paths.