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Full Review for Tony Hawk's Proving Ground by up my Ash

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Introduction

Neversoft has been making and selling Skater games at a pace that seems almost impossible. I am not sure if they understand the basics of a good skate game or not. The story is similar to many other of their mediocar games. You are stuck creating and developing a charatcer that doesn't truly resemble you. The cut scenes talk about "nailing a sick trick" or being "stoked." If you pick up this game in hopes of it being amazing... Sorry to disapoint you.

 

Graphics

Every thing looks good. But fails to show improvment from any other game of theirs. There's nothing glamorous about it. Character models, city elements, weather effects -- they all get the job done...and that's about all. If you were hoping to pick up this game and say WOW those graphics are real life you set yourself up for dissapointment. The Screen shots on many websites are from Cut scenes. So if you are thinking the graphics are good from what a website shows you may just want to do some more research.

 

Sound

The Tunes aren't that bad. The voice acting and SFX sounds are not good. People please stop talking. The mouthing is not good. It looks like one of those jappanese anime shows where the talking stops and yet the characters mouth is still moving. Did Neversoft really put much effort into the Sound... Probably not.

 

Gameplay

The focus this year is on having three career paths, which you can eventually just build all of simultaneously: Pro, where you basically skate for points and high-scoring combos, Rigger, where you use the long-running skate editor to create new places to skate, and Hardcore, where you gain tons of speed and do really huge gaps and large single moves. The career mode is pretty strange to start, dropping you into an ugly section of Philadelphia with no real tutorial and letting you discover people to skate with. This is fun for awhile. You are able to just skate around and not worry about challanges at times. The challenges come with three rankings AM, PRO, EXPERT. With each challenge being completed you are able to travel to new locations and explore and skate. The let down for me was the lack of challenges befor the end of the game. The skill level required to do a challenge changes as well. Some you can get Expert without blinking an eye, where as others require your time and effort just to get a mere Amature ranking.

 

Lastability

If this were the first Tony Hawk, you could free skate for days. But it's the ninth installment, so like me, you've probably done it all about 8 times before and there's not a whole lot to make you want to keep going. Once you complete a level there really is no reason to go back. Challanges are finished and once you get expert (which many a time isn't hard) you get nothing for redoing a challenge.

 

Overall

Unfortunately, the few bits of originality don't work out like the developers planned. We get many of the same goals we've seen dozens of times along with annoying new twists. For example, for photo challenges you now have to click the right stick yourself when you're in the "target area" for a trick to take the photo. Why? I'm not the one taking the photo - some guy with the camera is! There are frustrating races where you're expected to just magically know when to hit a kicker and go up to a rooftop to hit a checkpoint, and all you've got to go by is an arrow at the top of your screen vaguely pointing to the next checkpoint. Sure, it's not quite as annoying as some goals were in the past, but I can't even imagine just how difficult Proving Ground is for someone who has never played a past game.
In a lot of ways, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is more like an action-adventure game that happens to involve doing a lot of tricks on your skateboard. There's stat-building which you must do to become a better skater and increase your skills, and new tricks must be unlocked before you can bust them out anywhere you like. The stat building works independently of the money you'll earn (which can unlock various bits and pieces) or the amount of respect you have, and many of the plot elements and cutscenes try to focus on skating but just can't be taken very seriously. They don't really have any foundation in reality, and we get many of the same pro skaters yawning out their lines of dialogue just like in years past. It all winds up being just a little underwhelming, even if I do like the idea of actually being able to ollie higher and spin faster at the end of the game than I can at the beginning (unlike EA's skate, released last month).


Final Score: 64%

Review by: up my Ash

 

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