Tony Hawk's Proving Ground Review
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is the 9nth game in the main Tony Hawk series. This time Neversoft gives you a choice on how you want to make your skater. They can skate as a career, to inovate, or they can just skate to skate. I for one thought this would open a whole world of opputunities, but instead we get this.
One path your skater can take is career. Like the other paths in the game there are three skate episodes. One of them has you taking magazine pictures. Another has you skating in Arto Saari's video. The last one has you skating in competitions against Eric Sparrow from T.H.U.G. Then are another three goals where you impress a pro (which you also do for the other paths.) Then there is the final goal, which for the Pro skater path is a huge demo, complete with fire rings and fire works. From this path you learn Nail-The-Trick, Nail-The-Manual, and Nail-The-Grab. Nail-The-Grab and Nail-The-Trick are cool, but you won't find yourself wanting to use Nail-The-Manual.
Another path your skater can take is rigger, where you are creating and skating. One episode has you folowing around Bam Margera interrupteing the shooting for his t.v. show (which makes the game seem kindof out dated because he doesn't have one still running.) Another has you entering a competition called "Rig-The-World." The final rigger skate episode has you entering the "Van's Downtown Jam." The final goal for rigger is that you turn a junkyard into a skatepark. In rigger you get the rigging kit abilities and climbing skills. The rigging kit is cool, but it stinks how you can only put 30 pieces around the huge three city world. Climbing helps you get to some places and works well.
The last path your skater can take is hardcore, where you skate because you love skating. One of the episodes has you defending the cities from a gang called Two-One. Another has you bowl-skating. The final episode has you filming for a video to put on the internet. The final goal for hardcore has you doing stunts for a movie. In hardcore you gain the abilities to skate-check, to do bowl riding moves, and to agro-kick/push. Agro-kick/push is good for gaing extra speed before going off a ramp, speeding up during a manual, or just getting around faster. Skate-checking is when you tackle somebody and send them flying, which is really fun to do and I found myself doing it a lot. I think the bowl riding moves were the worst feature added to the game. After you impress all the pro's. You shoot a video with these skaters. Where you do a goal with each of them, based on what you did with them in the main stories. In addition to all this, there are tons of side goals. These range from more video and picture shooting, to races. All of the tricks from last-year's game return, minus focus mode. Some of them have just been mapped to different buttons. There is also the occasional glitch. There is also a video editor and online.
So in conclusion, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is the best Tony Hawk Game since T.H.U.G. It introduces some good ideas into the series like the multi-path story, but Neversoft needs to take a break from the yearly Hawk schedule to have enough time to more finely craft the next one. I'd wait longer if it means a better game.
One path your skater can take is career. Like the other paths in the game there are three skate episodes. One of them has you taking magazine pictures. Another has you skating in Arto Saari's video. The last one has you skating in competitions against Eric Sparrow from T.H.U.G. Then are another three goals where you impress a pro (which you also do for the other paths.) Then there is the final goal, which for the Pro skater path is a huge demo, complete with fire rings and fire works. From this path you learn Nail-The-Trick, Nail-The-Manual, and Nail-The-Grab. Nail-The-Grab and Nail-The-Trick are cool, but you won't find yourself wanting to use Nail-The-Manual.
Another path your skater can take is rigger, where you are creating and skating. One episode has you folowing around Bam Margera interrupteing the shooting for his t.v. show (which makes the game seem kindof out dated because he doesn't have one still running.) Another has you entering a competition called "Rig-The-World." The final rigger skate episode has you entering the "Van's Downtown Jam." The final goal for rigger is that you turn a junkyard into a skatepark. In rigger you get the rigging kit abilities and climbing skills. The rigging kit is cool, but it stinks how you can only put 30 pieces around the huge three city world. Climbing helps you get to some places and works well.
The last path your skater can take is hardcore, where you skate because you love skating. One of the episodes has you defending the cities from a gang called Two-One. Another has you bowl-skating. The final episode has you filming for a video to put on the internet. The final goal for hardcore has you doing stunts for a movie. In hardcore you gain the abilities to skate-check, to do bowl riding moves, and to agro-kick/push. Agro-kick/push is good for gaing extra speed before going off a ramp, speeding up during a manual, or just getting around faster. Skate-checking is when you tackle somebody and send them flying, which is really fun to do and I found myself doing it a lot. I think the bowl riding moves were the worst feature added to the game. After you impress all the pro's. You shoot a video with these skaters. Where you do a goal with each of them, based on what you did with them in the main stories. In addition to all this, there are tons of side goals. These range from more video and picture shooting, to races. All of the tricks from last-year's game return, minus focus mode. Some of them have just been mapped to different buttons. There is also the occasional glitch. There is also a video editor and online.
So in conclusion, Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is the best Tony Hawk Game since T.H.U.G. It introduces some good ideas into the series like the multi-path story, but Neversoft needs to take a break from the yearly Hawk schedule to have enough time to more finely craft the next one. I'd wait longer if it means a better game.