Ground to Dust
Proving Ground is the deepest, lengthiest Tony Hawk yet. So why does it feel so empty?
Published: November 4, 2007
I personally would have liked to have unlocked Nail-the-Grab and Nail-the-Manual early on instead of hours into the game, because along with Project 8's Nail-the-Trick Mode, you could spend days trying to nail an absolutely insane line, all in slo-mo, and all directed by just the shoulder buttons (holding L2 starts a grab, holding R2 sets you up for your own manual balances) and the analog sticks. It's insanely addictive (especially during online games, where you can enter Nail-the- Modes at any time, and you can actually see other players flying through the air in slo-mo when they do it), but it's possible that some will play the game for a few hours and not even know it's there.
The number of little things tucked away in the game's Tony Hawk-ized versions of real-life skate spots (arguably the best real-life level designs Neversoft has ever done for their games) are staggering. The spot challenges are as numerous as Starbucks locations in the real world, cropping up just feet from one another at times, and finding an arcade cabinet unlocks the new Pac-Man like Hawk Man 2000 modes, plus all of the old-school timed challenges and goals like C-O-M-B-O and S-K-A-T-E letters, points challenges and the like. Again, there's so many little things (I didn't even get to finding all the gaps or the new Aggro moves that let you push off cars and walls to keep manuals going almost indefinitely) that even if there were no story-driven career paths, the game will still offer more stuff to do than any of the previous games.
The biggest change to things isn't in the new moves, it's not in the new approach to handling the Career Mode (which, honestly, was nice and meaty, but perhaps a bit too drawn out for my tastes -- especially when it was a means to unlock things like core moves and skills for climbing and such), it's not even the online mode, which is nice but really just streamlines the whole process of playing with others (have I mentioned you can bet your hard-earned cash in challenges? Well, um, you can, and it's a blast).
No, the biggest change here is in how the old Create-a-Park sections were integrated into the game. It's as if Neversoft took the complaints of the mode missing from Project 8 and just went, "fine, you want to build your own stuff? Take this" and literally made the whole game world editable. Think about that for a second: you can put half-pipes, rails, ramps, kickers, any of the dozens of pieces that the game slowly unlocks as you move through the rigger career path anywhere you want. There are limits to the number of pieces, of course, but the developer went overboard in making up for the missing mode last time. In fact, if pressed, I'd say it was the first truly next-gen thing the series has done since moving to the PS3 and 360.
For those that want more of a skate park setting, the new Skate Lounge areas give you a more or less blank slate (in a handful of themed environments like a gothic church or warehouse), allowing you to place pieces however you'd like (the controls for which are impressively deep, and allow for both scale and height changes with just shoulder button toggles), then invite people over. In a Home-like twist, you can unlock TVs (or even massive, drive-in-huge screens) to play videos on -- a nice touch if you really get into the game's video editing features.
That video editor is surprisingly robust, allowing you to add filters and effects to existing runs (all you have to do to start recording is hit Start and select the option), or to place cameras in static positions or even let you record movements in real-time. I never did really get into the feature, simply because I've never had the patience for video editing to begin with, but the fairly simple layout of things (though there is some bumbling around that must be done with switching between modes) means you can start recording, lay down a huge run, and have it recorded and saved in just a few minutes.
What blows my mind is that Neversoft was able to include everything they did in the normal year-long development schedule. Yes, the game lacks a bit of polish in the way of transitions and popping and whatnot, and the gameplay is almost a decade old at its core, but there is a ton of game to digest here, making Proving Ground some of the best $60 you can spend -- provided you haven't already burned out on the series. If Activision is smart, they'll do the right thing to ensure that doesn't happen, but I'm not getting my hopes up.
