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NOTE: In the above video review, X-Play chides Activision for enabling players to skateboard on an American Veteran's Memorial. An Activision spokesperson has stated that nearby signage in the game indicates that it is the Donor’s Wall for the Chilvers Foundation, a fictious organization, and not a War Memorial -- despite the uncanny resemblance.  It should be further noted that neither Activision nor X-Play advocate the desecration of any memorial, virtual or otherwise.

The leaves are starting to turn pretty colors, so that means another Tony Hawk game is ready to take over your life and take away the pain of not having a girlfriend. Or any coordination. Sigh.

The Birdman (no not Harvey, the other one) has returned with Tony Hawk Project 8 for PS3 and Xbox 360, and with over a billion dollars in sales for the franchise since 1999 across every imaginable platform, the real question is: does Project 8 actually bring anything new to the table? With EA’s recently announced foray into the skateboarding genre (Skate, expected in 2007), Tony needs to solidify his place at the top of the half-pipe with Project 8.

Less Silly, More Better
In the last Tony Hawk game, American Wasteland, Neversoft started to move away from most of the non-skateboarding jackassery that was ruining the series. Good riddance. Tony Hawk Project 8 makes its way even further back to the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series of old… with only minimal non-skating related challenges. Sure, there’s a ‘fall from X height and break X amount of bones’ challenge here and there, but they are thankfully few and far between. The game does have some relatively serious frame-rate issues, particularly on the PS3 version, but it’s not totally unplayable. However, it is unforgivable in the face of the awesome power left unharnessed deep inside the PS3’s cell processor. Let’s hope the choppiness is something that can be fixed with an online patch. And while the overall graphics for this game look better than ever before, they won’t blow you away… and they won’t make you feel good about having dropped $600 on a PS3. There’s probably not going to be a patch for that. Such is life.

The point of Project 8 is to earn yourself a spot on Tony Hawk’s new crew… called Project 8. You progress through the game by completing challenges at your own pace, moving up in the ranks from the bottom slot - #200 – up to hopefully the top eight. All of your favorite professional skaters make appearances, from Bob Burnquist to Bam Margera, with a few newcomers to the series thrown in like Nyjah Huston and Dustin Dolins. Former pro skater/ Kevin Smith cohort/ My Name is Earl star Jason Lee shows up early on as your first sponsor (Stereo Skateboards, which he owns in real life), and comes back time and again to challenge your skills and help you progress through the game. The character modeling for these skating stars is better than in previous Tony Hawk games, but considering what those games looked like, that’s not saying much. It’s definitely not what you’d expect out of the next-gen.

You’ll go through a pretty straightforward ‘make your character mode’ with all of the prerequisite cliché base models to choose from – punk rock guy, skater chick, urban dude and so on. Options here are weaker than in previous Hawk titles, but you’re not here to accessorize, you’re here to skate and/ or die.

Its like Déjà vu all over again
As you skate out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of your garage at the start of the game you’re presented with the ‘Suburbia’ level. Like American Wasteland, all the levels in Project 8 are linked together. And this time, there really is no load time between areas. Gone are the ‘tunnels’ from Wasteland that fooled you into thinking that there were no loading screens.

For veteran players some of these levels will look familiar. Perhaps too familiar. The skate park area feels a lot like the France level of THPS2. The Factory level feels like an update to the Foundry from THPS3. And yes, the snozzberries do indeed taste like snozzberries. It’s possible that in this eighth iteration of the game, Neversoft just plain ran out of ideas for levels. On the plus side the new Fun Park level is loads of fun, and though other levels feel similar to previous Tony Hawk titles, the overall layout is fun, well thought-out and designed to allow you to string together combos valued at well over one million points. If you’re h-core enough.

Skills, Challenges and Thumb Calluses
Your skills in Project 8 increase much like in real life – the more use them, the better you get. So get out there and start grinding, popping manuals and catching air as much as possible and your character becomes better and better. To max out on any particular skill requires a ton of work – for instance you’ll need to grind thousands upon thousands of total feet to level up enough to pass some of the later challenges. Be prepared for many thumb blisters to achieve skateboarding glory and make it to the top eight.

The challenges are a bit different this time around too. You can achieve three levels of success for each one that you come across right from the start of the game– Amateur, Pro and Sick. It’s a solid concept, but one that falls apart once you realize that you can’t actually achieve many of the ‘Pro’ or ‘Sick’ levels until your stats start to max out… meaning that no matter how much you pwned the previous Tony Hawk games, you’ll end up having to go back and redo a lot of the challenges that you beat on Amateur the first time around.

Another new, possibly more welcome addition to the game is the spot challenge. As you skate around you’ll notice chalk lines on and around certain obstacles. These mark grind, manual and other skill based benchmarks for you to find and beat. It’s a nice addition and adds tons of replayability to the game for the obsessive compulsive Tony Hawkers that need to beat every possible part of the game. You know who you are.

And of course the Classic Challenges are back, woven nicely into the normal flow of the game – spell out S-K-A-T-E, find the secret tape, etc. Do them all in one two minute run to get the ‘Sick’ score. Good luck.

Nail the Trick, Rack the Groin
The engine itself has been rebuilt from the ground up for next-gen, including all new animations and textures. Real mo-cap was used for every crazy trick you’ll pull, and the time and care that went into this shows. It’s especially apparent for the new ‘Nail the Trick’ feature, which allows you to slow down time and control each of your skaters legs with the left and right analog sticks. The physics on this new jaw-dropping maneuver are spot on. Pushing ‘down’ on the left stick flicks your front toe down and begins a kickflip; back on the same stick pushes your heel to the corner of the board will land you a heelflip. The same controls on the right stick will initiate shove-its and whatnot. You can link together multiple tricks and even tech it out by kicking at the board while the trucks are up for added bonuses.

It’s hard to express what an awesome addition this is to the series. It finally adds some real, honest-to-goodness skateboarding feel to the game. Once you get the hang of it you’ll be dropping ‘Nail the Trick’ moves in with your already ridiculous lines, and you’ll feel like you actually have accomplished something the first time you land one clean out in the wild.

Arguably manuals and reverts have added more to the series, opening up a world in which all tricks could be linked together fluidly. But ‘Nail the Trick’ is nearly as groundbreaking, adding a sense of realism to the game that actual skateboarders have been clamoring about for years.

The SIXAXIS controls for the game are novel for a moment, but you won’t end up using them in the end. Project 8 is already among the more complicated games from a physical standpoint, adding the SIXAXIS level of dimensionality is just too much.

But Should I Buy It?
Hardcore Tony Hawk fans will find everything they want in this title, and with the ‘Nail the Trick’ mode, even more. They’ll ignore the frame-rate issues, the embarrassing lack of online support for the PS3 version and the general unoriginality of the level design and play this for what it is… the most fun Tony Hawk game to date.

Casual players may find the game entirely too complicated. It’s not an easy game to pick up if you haven’t been playing the series since day one. But it is worth a shot, as the Tony Hawk franchise has earned its spot at the top of the extreme sports game heap for a reason, and #8 in the series is the best among them.

Article by: Rob Juster