The days of button-combo skateboarding games are over. Tony Hawk games have always been a series that appeals to people who aren’t the biggest skateboarding fans but the increasingly difficult button combos of the most recent games have begun to weed out all the casual fans of the series. With the success of EA’s SKATE, Activision needed to do something in order to bring back some respect to the Tony Hawk series. What we see today with Tony Hawk: Ride was their reaction and it might have been a bit too ambitious. While I applaud Activision for allowing Tony Hawk to create his “dream” game which is a peripheral based skateboarding game, Ride just seems like it needed a little more time in development.
The board itself is built very well and can withstand a beating. It’s about the same size as a real skateboard and has four sensors around the board to recognize a push or a grab. There are also two accelerometers in the board to recognize the lift and tilt of the board. It isn’t flat at the bottom which was done to give the user the feeling of being on a real skateboard and to allow them to turn a little easier. For people who have never been on a skateboard before this could not have been a worse decision. I don’t know if they couldn’t have done what they did with a completely flat board but because it isn’t flat it causes some people to constantly lose balance on the board.  The different difficulty levels are supposed to help ease you into the new experience but the easiest level fails to do so.
To perform tricks it’s all about lifting the board up and snapping it down. To add to the moves you can either tilt the board by leaning back or forward or move the board left to right. An Ollie or Nollie is performed by lifting the front or back of the board up in the air. To perform a grab trick you either actually grab the various sensors or wave your hand over it while the board is lifted. Kick flips or shove its can be performed by tilting or turning the board also while it is lifted. You can also perform even more difficult moves like a 180 by actually performing a 180 while standing on the board. There are tons of tutorials on how to perform more specific tricks in the game but they don’t go through every move you can do, which you need to know when playing the challenge mode. To pull off the tricks isn’t that hard but actually knowing what you are doing is and so is staying on the board.
To help me stay on the board I actually modified it by adding real grip tape, which can be found at any skate shop. This incredibly enhanced my experience with the game. Now I was able to turn the board sideways, easily perform 180’s and overall I felt I had much more control over the board. As good as the board is adding grip tape should have been something the developers at Robomodo should have considered. Although I feel more comfortable with the grip tape I still found myself constantly getting frustrated with the responsiveness of the game. The board responds well to manuals, Ollies, complete turns and simple navigation. Where the responsiveness begins to falter is in the more complicated tricks which you are asked to perform in the challenge mode.
Tony Hawk: Ride is very much like the original titles. There’s the story mode in which you take your character on the Road to becoming a skateboard god, a party mode in which every player takes turns and the online multiplayer. In the story mode you’ll be asked to compete in Speed Runs, Trick competitions, Trick Challenges and Vert Competition. The speed run mode is fairly simple you have to go from point A to B as fast you can while picking up time bubbles that can reduce your overall time. On Casual difficulty, it’s pretty simple, you choose which path you want to go and you try to hit as many time bubbles as you can. The problem with this is at times the automated track will take you away from the time bubbles and sometimes will run you into objects. On harder difficulties, since you can steer you can choose the best path possible. The trick and vert competitions was the lone bright spot. All you have to do is try to get the high score for that particular level. The challenges are the main reason a lot of people, including myself, get frustrated with the game.
For a title that is supposed to be meant for anyone to play, the challenges don’t do anything to help the average person get the sensation of skating. In the challenge modes you are asked to perform specific tasks such as jump the gap, grind this rail, transfer to the next vert ramp or perform a manual. When they ask you to perform something as specific as a flick trick then a tilt trick then a 5-0 grind, that’s when the frustration kicks in. First of all, I don’t even know what a 5-0 grind is and the game doesn’t teach you how do it. Then when you have to perform the different tricks back to back, chances are you won’t be able to because the responsiveness isn’t that great. Adding to the frustration is having to complete every trick in the challenge before moving on to the next. So if you mess up either at the start or in the middle you have to sit there till the end in order to restart the challenge. Why they couldn’t add a restart function for this mode makes absolutely no sense.
Although I’m not new to the concept of skateboarding, I am new to performing tricks. So I am the target audience yet I constantly felt that the hardcore skaters are the only ones that can appreciate the game and have the patience for it. This is why I had some skilled skateboarders who do know how to perform tricks come in and play the game. When they played it, they had a blast but also felt that some of the moves they did were by accident. They also felt that the turning was too sensitive in the harder difficulties even after tweaking the tightness. The most fun they had with the game was in the trick sessions. I felt the same way. It’s been a long time since I had that much fun playing a trick or vert session in a skateboarding game. This is only because I was able to pull off difficult moves without using complicated button combos and because most of the time I didn’t even do it on purpose.
Visually the game’s cell shaded graphics look great for the environment but look kind of off for the skaters themselves. There is a lot of customizable equipment but in terms of customizing the character itself, it’s far less than what we are accustomed to in Tony Hawk games. The level design is also very much like the original titles. They aren’t that big, very linear at times, there isn’t a lot of over the top skating areas and to be honest you are concentrating so much on what you are doing that you won’t even notice the random people standing around in the levels. Just like every other Tony Hawk title the soundtrack is solid, which is good cause you’ll be spending a lot of time in loading screens. In terms of game modes, online multiplayer was basically nonexistent and the party mode doesn’t offer anything special. Even when playing with other people, you’ll probably spend most of your time going through the story mode and trying to beat your friends’ scores.
Tony Hawk: Ride is a game that was built from the ground up by pro skateboarders and is ultimately meant for skilled skaters. As much as they like to say that it is meant for the casual audience, their attempt at mass market gaming failed because they didn’t develop a game that eases people into skateboarding. If they maybe slowed down the game on casual mode giving people a chance to respond or create a flat board maybe then the average person wouldn’t give up so easily on the game. As easy as this might be for a skilled skater, for anyone who has never even set foot on a skateboard, just doing that is very difficult with Tony Hawk: Ride.
Ultimately it suffers from one thing, not enough time. I’m sure they spent the normal two years on this game but for a brand new peripheral game it would have served them better to spend another year on it. The time spent on designing the board itself probably outweighed the time spent on making the game accessible. As much as Tony Hawk loves his game even he had issues with it dating back to E3 and those same problems weren’t really fixed for the final release. I had fun playing the game but only after I spent countless hours with it and after I modified it myself. The huge learning curve is only present because Robomodo didn’t design the casual mode casual enough. Skilled skaters should love this game but even they I am sure would get frustrated with the challenge mode. The lack of depth in the game, the lack of any true multiplayer, the lackluster customization all add to the sense of an incomplete game. What they have here is a very expensive tech demo that I hope is laying the ground work for better more accurate peripheral based game in the future.
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| Title: Tony Hawk: Ride |
| Publisher: Activision |
| Developer: Robomodo |
| Platform(s): PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii |
| Release Date: November 19, 2009 |
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| Doin It RIGHT:
- Environment looks great.
- Vert and Trick Mode is a lot of fun.
- Soundtrack is solid.
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Doin It RONG:
- Completely frustrating challenge mode.
- The board and game doesn’t do much to help the casual gamer.
- The game is not as responsive as it should be.
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FINAL SCORE: 6/ 10
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Note: The score given reflects not only my opinion but I also took into account the opinions of gamers who never skateboarded before and gamers who are skilled skateboarders. The skilled skaters I spoke to highly recommend the game. On the flip side people new to skateboarding did not enjoy their time with it.
Modern Warfare 2 was a huge success but many people including myself felt that it didn’t live up to the quality that its predecessor brought. Maybe Infinity Ward has been listening. They have decided to add 2 returning maps from COD4 in the upcoming DLC. Crash and Overgrown are the two remakes gamers will see in the DLC being called “Stimulus Package”. The add-on will also include 3 brand new maps Bailout, Storm and Salvage. The name of the DLC is actually quite fitting because it comes with a very hefty price tag of $15 or 1200 Microsoft points. Okay, I know, it’s only $5 more but seeing as there are only 3 new maps I can’t help but feel the extra charge was only added because Activition and Infinity Ward know people are going to buy it so why not try to add to their already fat pockets right?
We wanna take you for a ride. We can’t pick up each and every one of you to give you the joyride of a lifetime, so we figured the multiplayer beta of Bizarre Creations’ upcoming racer Blur would do the trick just as well.
If your are looking for some dinosaur shooting fun or if you want to punch a raptor, Activision has released a demo for Jurassic: The Hunted on Xbox Live. Despite not being able to hop into the epic story mode, in this demo you will get to experience the survivor arena. Pitted against dino baddies, you are behind a shoddily made barricade trying to see how long you can survive. Experience a variety of weapons and the punch-a-raptor in the face melee. Download, have some fun, and try not to take this too seriously. (Why am I more bothered by shooting down my childhood dino-buddies than the MW2: No Russian mission?) This free demo is only available to XBL Gold subscribers and has not been announced for the PS3.
Even though I’ve been known to hoard music games like they’re going out of style, even I have noticed a severe discrepancy in quality over the past couple of years. While most games go out of their way to avoid bringing new styles of play into the field and head straight for the fastest way to make cash, luckily there are still minds out there who think creatively. While DJ Hero isn’t exactly the first game of its kind (Beatmania IIDX, anyone?), it manages to capture the feeling of being a real DJ settled right in the heart of the hottest night clubs and bumpin’ joints where the real greats mixed it up. It may not be perfect, but it’s certainly on the right track. We need more of this kind of innovation, and I’m proud to say that DJ Hero is the start of a revolution — and not one involving karaoke.
Activision-Blizzard’s CFO, Thomas Tippl, recently revealed in an interview that more Activision products will be going the way of World of Warcraft. This means players should expect to see more online monetization models in the future for Activision games. This includes currently released games like Call of Duty.
During a panel at the 
Have you always dreamed of being a DJ? Is traditional rock not your thing? Do you fall asleep each night counting down the days to DJ Hero’s upcoming release on October 27? To help get you even more pumped, check out the game’s intro cinematic after the break.
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