Tony Hawk Proving Ground is a Waste

Tony Hawk Proving Ground (THPG) is the tenth installment of the Tony Hawk video game franchise, and it was released for every console on October 10^th. Aside from all of the past releases THPG is reconnecting with the previous versions of the franchise by making this a strictly skating game. New elements are introduced in this game varying from a choose your own path style of gaming. You can choose a rigger path (Skaters that build their own ramps), hardcore path (Conduct crazy tricks just for the love of skating), and career path (create videos and photos to gain endorsements). In choosing a path you gain special abilities by completing tasks.

The setting finally explores the not so commercialized east coast scene in skating. Players will skate in a tri-state area of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. The world and environments are some what satisfying. By tweaking the formula THPG has attempted to make a flawless mode of gameplay by having regular street missions readily available to complete. In doing this quantity of missions lack the quality.

The game lags and freezes more than once on a regular basis which is like most of the Tony Hawk games, but there is one too many in THPG. The game introduces some physics when it comes to tackling posers (enemy in game) while riding on your skateboard and using the new the nail-the-trick special. Other than these new elements, the physics remains the same such as landing perfectly off of every vertical ramp or that you can even grind on any edge in any setting.

This game is so long I felt like it was a job that I had to beat this game. It's lengthy gameplay is both a positive and a negative. The positive is that the game does challenge every player and attempts to unlock more achievements to obtain the rights to boast who's got more game. The negative is that it's so tedious it looses its fun after half an hour of trying to complete a mission. Since there are so many glitches in this game, some missions just need some good luck and elbow grease.

The nail-the-trick special is not a great innovation but a good try. When you click both analog sticks it slows time down to allow the skater a longer period of time to make as many flips as possible before they would land on the ground. The physics for this special is somewhat confusing and well designed but still not that great. By making the board usable by every axis on the analog sticks, it is hard to match every direction exactly so you can't always land the trick you would like.

Do not waste your time and money. No one can recreate what once was the phenomena of a Tony Hawk Pro Skater game when it was first released in 1999. Eight years later we come to understand more innovations in a game does not necessarily mean that everyone will be interested in, especially if it does not even work properly. Both Neversoft and Activision should understand that if a massive game like Halo 3 can play with hardly any lags, than any other game should not even have any. What absolutely killed this game for me is the inability to skip the hour and a half long tutorial (all of downtown Philadelphia which is about 6 missions) since everyone knows how to play Tony Hawk ergo tutorials should be optional. There still has not even been a price drop so unless you will die if you don't buy this game be ready to spend $59.99