Tony Hawk's Project 8
Xbox360
Activision


The Tony Hawk series brought extreme sports to armchair quarterbacks and has kept us grinding, manualling and kickflipping for nearly ten years. However, although the series has made some leaps and bounds as it's moved to next generation consoles, it feels like you've done it all before. This is certainly a problem for the franchise, as 'Project 8' is one of the best Tony Hawk games in a while.

The story is a little light, but serves its purpose in making you perform tricks to get stokens (points) and move up ranks into the top eight skaters in your city. You will end up skating all over your city, unlocking different areas by performing the usual tasks of grinding, kickflipping and so forth.

You can hear the different pitch and wail and see the wheels rotating independently when you go into the air. The board is completely separate from the skater - not that the game ever felt like you were riding with your feet nailed to a plank, but it gives you a better sense of freedom now.

Each Tony Hawk game introduces a new feature and the new Nail The Trick mode is especially cool. At anytime, you can click the controller joysticks and you'll go into slow motion, the camera zooming in and the joysticks becoming your feet. Moving the joysticks will flip or rotate the board and you can do any number of awesome moves. The other new feature is bailing. Now, if you stack it, you can bail out and cause massive damage to yourself, racking up a hospital bill and breaking bones.

This time around instead of choosing which level you're going to try to attempt a trick; with Spot Challenges it's all up to how well you play. For example, there's a task early on which requires you to natas spin on a number of poles. Get a certain number of poles and you'll get an Amateur ranking. Spin on a few more and you'll get Pro. Tricks are conveniently marked too, so things like grinding lines have graffiti spots telling you how far to grind before you're awarded with Amature, Pro or Sick. It allows a much better flow to the game and you can re-try tricks to get better scores and thus a better story ranking.

I love the Tony Hawk games, but even with all the new bells and whistles, I was left feeling 'Project 8' needed something different, something more to make it perfect. Truth be told, I became bored with the game rather quickly, and being the fan of the series, I am rather disappointed. I'm not entirely sure what it is - although it's certainly not the online modes which offer nothing new in the slightest - but the series definitely needs something more to get me to keep playing it.

Julian Cram