by: Andrew Thornton

August 27, 2007

ony Hawks Project 8 for the 360 is meant to move the series forward in a rather serious way - it’s meant to bring Tony Hawk to the next generation. And in a lot of ways the game succeeds. But some glaring technical flaws have made their way in and beyond that the series is simply starting to show its age. It’s tired and if Neversoft doesn’t do something to give it some much needed energy soon, we may want to put it down.


You create your skater to start off the career mode in Project 8. You’re a young skater and want to get onto Tony’s new project, Project 8. You’re currently ranked 200 out of skaters in the country and have to get into the top 8. This is actually pretty simple; you can be in the top 100 within probably 2 hours. The first thing you’ll probably notice is that there are so few options to create your character with. In fact, create a character for some reason has been stripped bare. I created a decent enough character but nowhere near the ones I could create in past games. In fact, most of the customization has been stripped from the game. Gone are create-a-park, create-a-trick, create-a-design…I don’t know what moron decided it’d be a good idea to take out such features but they should be fired.

I’m a huge fan of the new land-a-trick system, where you go into slow motion and then use the controller’s analog sticks to individually control his feet, creating your own moves in the process. It’s very cool. It can feel a little cheap at times but you’ll definitely have a good time with it. You can also create some pretty cool bails if you do it off of the right ramp, as one little slip will send your skater flying. There’s definitely a learning curve here.

Level design is another major problem, mainly that all of the levels feel fairly repetitive and similar to ones from the last games, only with less creativity. Everything here is too straight forward and simple. The gameplay philosophy in Project 8 is an open world thing, where all the levels are connected and open and you can skate between them, but honestly, I think this limited the game’s creativity. Not one of the levels in this game manages to come anywhere near the creativity that we’ve come to know as a part of the series. I do really like the feel of the game this time around, which is more like that of the first few games of the series. Cut the destruction and extreme feel to a degree and bring back the pro skaters. It’s what I’ve been wanting in the series for years, but I wanted it in a better game than Project 8.

At least Project 8 looks pretty good. Unlike the other versions of this game, the 360 and PS3 versions of Project 8 were actually made a priority by Activision and it shows here. This is easily the best looking installment of the series. Unfortunately though, because of the focus on making the title look better for the next generation, a few technical problems snuck in and were not corrected. There are some pretty major framerate problems at times, at least on the 360 version. My 360 version saw framerate drops fairly often actually.

As always, the soundtrack for Project 8 is pretty good. It isn’t the best of the series but there are some pretty good songs here. Voice acting and sound effects are fine. Everything here is fine, but there’s nothing great to it.

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I do appreciate Neversoft trying to open Tony Hawk up for the next generation, I do. It’s kind of a cool idea to take the game into one big world; skating between them is a nice feature. But for it to be worthwhile, the world you’re skating in has to be worth skating in. The level design in an extreme sports title is one of its most important features, and the level design here is poor to say the least. Is there still fun to be had with Project 8? Most definitely, but the series is starting to show its age in a rather serious way. Neversoft has brought out eight Tony Hawk games now in eight years. We haven’t had a year without a Tony Hawk since before its inception. It’s time for a break. Fans were starting to make fun of yearly Tony Hawk around the time THUG came out; it was a funny joke then, now it’s just getting a bit sad. Take a year off Neversoft and really think about where you want to take this series. Because right now, Tony Hawk is a tired game and we’re tired of it.

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