Video Game Review: Tony Hawk's Proving Ground

This is no sports game it's a full on Pseudo-RPG on a skateboard!! I've been a fan of the Tony Hawk games ever since the first one game out, but this one takes all of them and adds a brand new element to the game. In Tony Hawk's Proving Ground you have the ability to make your own path in the game as if it were a standard RPG like game.

There is the standard career mode in which you have to complete tasks and gain items to progress further in the game, but it adds the aspect of picking the styles you want to use to customize your character along with a full customizable character creation section, like in many other Tony Hawk games allows you to put yourself in the game which is always a pleasant feature in any game. After a brief tutorial mode you will be thrust into the game. Learning the moves you've selected to use and learning how to navigate can be a bit frustrating at times, but you should get the hang of it relatively quickly.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground offers many new skating tricks which have added to the difficulty, but also added to the fun. With the earlier Tony Hawk games the moves were limited to a few moves, but in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground there are so many moves and combinations that you can attempt to master that at first it leaves you a little overwhelmed. After many hours of practice you will be able to master at least some of the more complicated tricks which earn you higher rewards. The single player aspect is only one aspect of the game. You have the ability to play online with a total of 8 players (including yourself) for multiplayer mayhem.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is supposed to be the best game in the series, but most of all in looks like an arcade game, with the developers not really trying too hard with this one. As stated before the character creation is a cool aspect of the game, but as with other Tony Hawk games you had the ability to add your own picture to make the game character really you, but they declined to have that portion of the character creation in this title. The sound as well is subpar compared to the other games in the franchise. Some of the achievements are really hard to get and then some are really easy, so the balance in the game is a little off.

A couple of good aspects of the game is the ability to create your own skate parks and you can even share these wit other Tony Hawk's Proving Ground gamers. The other aspect of the game that I thought was really cool was the ability to create your own videos, along with the ability to edit these videos, so that you can show off your skills in the game to a wide variety of gamers through Xbox Live. This feature brings to mind Project Gotham Racing, which also allows users to view game videos other users known as Gotham TV. So it seems like they just ripped the idea from them, but it does offer a little more of a rewarding experience when you are playing the game until you add your video which you think no one can top, only to find that there are much more skilled players than you, but that's part of the game! I would recommend this game only as a rental; there are other more realistic and possibly more fun skating games coming out for the Xbox 360, so go try one of the first!