This eighth instalment in the hugely popular skateboarding series, and the first built specially for the Xbox 360, is the best and most realistic by far.
While exaggerated and impossible, it's all executed properly. Every wobble, every turn, all motion-captured. The ragdoll on the bails is barking mad, even allowing you to augment its lunacy by extending the skeleton-destroying impacts, but that just makes the boring bit - falling off your skateboard - more fun.
A really solid skateboarding game full of content, with hidden objectives and side missions or unlockable content. There are tons of hours of fun in here and its always fun just skating around going for crazy tricks because the combos are endless and speed is intense.
Tony Hawk might be contracted for skating games until he’s far too old to be tearing it up on small planks of wood with wheels on, but at least the developers can still keep him going while he’s requiring medical aid to go to the bathroom and complaining about things being better in his day.
As a first attempt at a brand new engine, Tony Hawk's Project 8 delivers a pretty good game. The world in this game is very fun to skate around, the Nail the Trick mode adds to the game, the challenges are mostly fun with a large variety, and the career is great. It also starred Jason Lee who was later featured in Skate 3. Unfortunately, there are a few flaws with this game that does not make it my favorite in the series. First, the bail system is awful. The hospital bill has bad controls and its very frustrating. It's like a worse version of the Hall of Meat in the EA Skate series. Second, the Sick challenges are ridiculously difficult that I question if the developers tested the goals. Finally, this games takes out a lot of customization from previous installments including less features the Create-A-Skater, no Create-A-Park, and several other creation features are absent. Despite the flaws, Tony Hawk's Project 8 is still a pretty good Tony Hawk game.
Coming here 10 years down the line, I have to say it for those in the back:
TONY HAWK'S PROJECT 8 IS NOT A BAD SKATING GAME, it's a bad Tony Hawk's Game.
Now when I say 'bad' I don't mean it's a terrible game that doesn't work, I mean that it's extremely disappointing for a Tony Hawk Game game. For it's time Project 8 didn't really throw all that much new stuff into the mix compared to previous Tony titles, but I personally think (having gone back to it recently) that this game does a fantastic Job of just being **** the Xbox 360 version at least.
The reason I say this is because the Xbox 360 (& PS3) versions had no loading screens between areas, making it an open-world skating game before SKATE. The world may have been on the small side compared to SKATE, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't and don't still enjoy just skating around the open world doing combos.
This missions in this game ranged from extremely fun and satisfying to extremely unfair and rage-worthy, but I never felt like I HAD to complete every single mission to its best. Heck, the game basically ends once you reach rank 8. since all you unlock for reaching rank 1 is some extra skaters, tricks and a Pro Bails Video. So I'm pretty grateful for that, it meant I could just enjoy what was on offer and not be forced to do a mission I hated or just found really hard, I could just take my time.
Project 8 isn't perfect, but it makes an effort, and I respect that.
In my opinion this is where the "Down Hill Jam" started. The Nail the trick feature was a rip off of Skate that was just a more complicated way to do tricks that I only used when forced to by the game. The levels were forgettable and the character creator either allowed you to be wanna-be Eminem or wanna-be Usher. The removal of create a park **** big time and the story while interesting for game-play was overall disappointing.
The Tony Hawk franchise reached it's peak very early on with the second game, which is a game I loved as a teen, and I bought this for nostalgic reasons and at least the graphics haven't changed much. There is fun to be had with this game when it first came out but the whole franchise just could not hang with the quality of the Skate games which blew this out of the water and improved skateboarding in games to a level that Tony Hawk games could not compete with. Overall this was good for a little thrash when it first came out but is worth nothing now, if you want a true Tony Hawk experience get the PlayStation out and replay Tony Hawk 2, if you want a fun and involving skateboarding experience then buy into the Skate franchise.
SummaryReengineered from the ground up, Tony Hawk’s Project 8 immerses players in the definitive skateboarding experience using ultra-realistic graphics, enhanced physics and responsive controls that simulate the feeling of skating with every trick and bail. The game challenges players to experience the intensity and pressure of skating against...