Tony Hawk’s the original skateboarding game, if you ask us. The franchise originally started on the PSone, called Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (THPS), and was met with the echoing sound of awed silence as it simply blew everyone away. It’s easy to learn but difficult to master approach caught everyone in it’s grasp whilst the goals kept them all playing, with things like High Scores (and Sick Scores, which usually gave you a headache just thinking about them), collecting the letters of the word Skate and the much-searched-for Secret Tapes.

There were three sequels to THPS, before the formula was drastically changed, for better or for worse. It was called Tony Hawk’s Underground and suddenly became a pseudo-open world game (you had to unlock areas), they introduced a storyline (that hasn’t changed to this day). Then yet more sequels came out, things like Underground 2, American Wasteland, Project 8 and and then Proving Grounds (that’s this one). THPS wasn’t really forgotten, with a Classic mode of some kind being thrown into the games to compensate for the change.

This brings me to Proving Grounds. It’s got the usual storyline, a skater who wants to be a professional skater…becoming a professional skater. Loads of already-professional skaters who apparently have nothing better to do than hang around in nondescript locations watching amateur skaters skate, give you strange, suicidal challenges that they wouldn’t attempt in real lives (grinding across power lines?). We won’t say much about this save that it happens in every open-world Tony Hawk’s game and it’s just as unlikely in every one of them, just as the challenges are.

We’ll concentrate on other things. First, the graphics. They’re not good. They’re not really that bad, either. People look pretty good, not terrific, but not terrible, either. The city backgrounds and such look a bit bare, not very detailed and generally boring, but the game is a year old, so we’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. The most impressive effect occurs in the Nail the Trick mode, which we’ll explain later, where everything goes into slomo and the backgrounds get a washed out, glaring brightness – but it’s still not very impressive.

Sounds? Well, they’re the usual scraping of the skateboard, and rolling of the wheels on the ground (which, as usual, changes slightly depending on what kind of ground you happen to be one) and the strange flip sound when you jump. The music is a bizarre mix of rock, punk and some damn hip hop. Odd, but there are some great songs (none of which are hip hop, of course), such as The Pretender by the Foo Fighters and Holiday in the Sun by the Sex Pistols. There’s also a lot of stuff I’ve never heard of, but there you go. Luckily, you can disable any songs you don’t like.

Now, the game itself. You start by creating a skater, you pick a face, hair, colour of face, colour of hair, clothing, colour of clothing, etc. Regardless of what you pick, you’ll probably look a bit like a Guitar Hero character. After you’ve done this you start the game. As we said earlier, we’re ignoring the storyline because it’s not important.

There are three strange ‘types’ of skater you can be in THPG; the professional skater, the rigger and the hardcore skater. The professional does things like photo shoots (whilst skating, obviously) and videos, whilst using ‘Nail the Trick’, the rigger rigs his own lines, by adding the likes of kickers, rails and other such things, and the hardcore is a bit angry, using ‘aggro’ to keep himself going (for example, whilst doing a manual, if you press R1 near a wall you can push yourself off of it to speed up). Each type has their own perks, and you can put them all together by simply using the skills of each.

You’re introduced to the new mechanics straight away, with three people you have to talk to who show you how to use them. Nail the Trick first appeared in Project 8, and is where you press L3 and R3 together when you’re in the air. The camera zooms into your board from the side and everything goes into bullet time – sorry, slow motion (which is irrefutable proof that all skaters could be characters from the Matrix). You then use the analogue sticks to control your feet, flipping the board the way you want to whenever either the top or the bottom is facing your feet, essentially making your own convoluted flip tricks. As long as you let go of the analogue when the wheels are at the bottom (obviously), you will land your trick.

When you press select, you enter rigging mode, where you can add things to the environment, such as rails, jumps, quarter pipes, etc. You use these to create your own lines, for making point making. When you first get this after the tutorial you only have a kicker and a camera (for taking pictures. Shockingly), but you get more by using skill points – the first takes only 50 skill points, so you’re ready to upgrade your first skill by the time you finish the tutorials, and you earn more by completing any one of the challenges dotted around the city.

You progress through the story by doing challenges and talking to the right people. Challenges consist of line challenges (trick on as many objects in the line as you can), grind challenges (grind for as long as you can), and other similar things, whilst people consist of professional skaters to your friends.

Other than this, the gameplay is still quintessential Tony Hawk gameplay, Square and a direction for flip tricks, hold circle and a direction for grabs, triangle to grind. It’s fast and it’s fun, so there’s no real changes there. There’s a local multiplayer mode too, which is just as fun as it always was (read: a lot of fun). There is an online mode, but there’s barely anybody playing it anymore, considering the game is a year old, and it wouldn’t let me join the only games that were there, saying ‘unable to join the selected game’.

So, that’s Tony Hawk’s Proving Grounds. It’s just a normal Tony Hawk’s game; the usual gameplay, the typical storyline, a few additions to the features. If you like Tony Hawk’s previous ‘open world’ outings it’s a pretty safe bet that you’ll like this. Not only that, but it should be cheap now (and probably pre-owned, too). I still mourne the loss of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater forumla, really, and personally I prefer Skate ever since I played the demo and bought the game a year ago, so you could get that instead, or you could wait for it’s sequel, or for the inevitable new entry into the Tony Hawk’s franchise. Let’s hope they make some significant changes next time. News of a skateboard peripheral are not making it look likely.

7/10

Filed under: T