Tony Hawk Ride Review for the Nintendo Wii

As a long time fan of Tony Hawk's skateboarding video games, and a proud new Wii owner, I couldn't wait to get my hands on Tony Hawk's new game called Ride. While several Wii snowboarding games use the Wii Fit controller as the board mechanism, Tony Hawk Ride comes with a full-sized skateboard controller, decked out with grip tape to make for a life-like experience. Unfortunately, this game did not live up to the hype. The skateboard controller is supposed to be the highlight of the game, however it turned out to be glitchy, to the point where the whole game is practically unplayable.

The game itself is a great concept, just like all of Tony Hawk's other games. This is where the honeymoon ends. Activision needs to take this game back to the drawing board, or at least spend a little more time in the production. To say this game was rushed is an understatement.

The skateboard controller, the holy grail of this game, is pretty cool... when it works properly, which is almost never.

First off, calibrating the skateboard is a pain in the you-know-what. In comparison, calibrating the Wii Fit device is a piece of cake, because it talks to the Wii with no problems. The skateboard's transmitter doesn't seem to work properly, and this wasn't a one-off issue for me. After returning the board to the store and coming home with a new game, it still took several tries to link the board up with the Wii.

Once the game got going, it didn't take long to realize that the skateboard's sensors didn't read my movements properly. Between tilts, turns, and hand placement, the skateboard is supposed to decipher between about one hundred different moves. Basic game play such as ollies and manuals are fine, but as soon as you start trying out fancier tricks, more often than not, either the skateboard doesn't pick up what you're doing, or the game doesn't interpret it properly. This wasn't much of an issue for my young girls, but it was for me. Tricks using hand motions were all but impossible. To make matters worse, the board randomly looses connection with the game and turns off out of nowhere.

In past games, like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, the free-skate areas were huge so becoming bored with an area wasn't an issue. Not so for Ride, where the game's programming feels neglected big time.

Activision should have spent a little more time perfecting the equipment before going live with it. This new concept, be it the Tony Hawk Ride skateboard, or a future snowboard controller shouldn't have been taken lightly. For years, ever since I first played Tony Hawk's skateboarding games and the Tricky snowboard game by SSX, I've been dreaming of this kind of lifelike controller. When I first saw the game review on TV's G4 channel, I went crazy. It looked like a blast. How Activision didn't know about the technically problems of this game is beyond me. At $120 a pop, you would think all glitches would have been worked out before going live. At this point, all we can hope for is a better, glitch-free 2.0 version of Tony Hawk Ride.