Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground (Wii) Review

Tony Hawk: Proving Ground, the latest iteration in the long running series by Activision proves two things. Firstly, if a game was not built from the ground up to take full use of the platforms controls then it should stick to the familiarity rather than leading the gamer so astray they feel like they have tripped into a broken reality. Secondly, familiarity and nostalgia from an experience more than 10 years old is not something that will make gamers weak at the knees and become suddenly affectionate towards any future product. Tony Hawk: Proving Ground is an experience that is easily forgettable on the Wii due to a unfathomable slaughtering of the controls and a poorly constructed port that looks like an early Gamecube game. In a review that could potentionally get me in a lot of trouble (fortunately it will be edited before being posted) I will take you through every aspect of what makes this tiresome installment such a poor entry in one of the most successful sporting series to date.

Proving Ground promises freedom right off the bat (didnt they all?). For people unfamiliar with the series, Tony Hawk is a skateboarding game where your mastery over the controls will determine just how successful you will be as a virtual skater. It has gone through many changes, from the level based, collectathon of old to the story driven, combo driven of new. Proving Ground steps back ten years into the past on the Wii and with cumbersome controls leaves you with a vile taste. The freedom is divided in three gameplay portions, training to be a pro, choosing to do insane gaps and tricks or taking things at your own pace. Really all its doing is dividing what was always there into three equally boring portions. The idea is to give you a choice to do what you want to do. Sure this works unless what you want to do is actually play the game in its entirety and by doing so, completely ignoring the entire concept of the game.

So as you could imagine it’s like any other Tony Hawk game where you skate around a massive world, mastering the skills and obtaining massive scores. Wrong. The supposed massive world has been chopped up into baby portions for the Wii, seemingly unable to process a free roaming world underneath its little white hood. Mastering the skills is out of the question as the cringe worthy controls make absolutely no sense whatsoever and the massive scores are unobtainable due to an inability to do the combos. The game does retain the core gameplay that made the series so popular. Some tasks have you securing combos, others have you getting huge scores, some even have you scaling buildings (in a very awkwardly animated way) to find neat gaps. This would be all well and good if I had not done the exact same thing over at least ten other Tony Hawk games. And even then it fails to do anything right with wonky camera angles and poor environments. Why couldnt this be more like Sk8land.

Let me express my disappointment with one example of just how the core gameplay and crappy controls makes this such a pathetic game on the Wii. A heavy part of the game relates to Nail the Trick, something introduced to me in Proving Ground on the Xbox 360. Once activated, the game would go into slow motion and you would be able to use the analogue sticks to kick the skateboard. In Proving Ground you can activate this sequence by pressing B and Z whenever airborne. Easy right? Try actually doing some tricks. Instead of using the D-Pad and control stick on the nunchuk you have to flick the controllers in almost random directions. The game barely registers your absurd waggling and more than often youll face plant into the concrete. To make matters worse youre introduced to this 5 minutes into the game, forcing you to dread what is to come.

Over the past 10 years you would have at least experienced one Tony Hawk title as there seems to be a new one every year. For some fans this may be an odd paradise of regular, new gaming content but for most it begs the questions, whats the point? The series has only taken baby steps from its original concept, rather than spending a few years on evolving the gameplay or perhaps perfecting on the foundations planted by the outstanding Tony Hawk 2. Proving Ground, while adding some new features, feels like the same old thing.

The controls are awful. The fewer words that are spoken on this matter the better. You jump by pressing A, ollie and hold onto your board with B and C. Manual by flicking the control stick up and down and control the direction of your skater with the control stick. Grinding is done by pressing B once youre over a ledge, rail or basically anything with a corner edge and the camera can be shifted by using the D-pad. The issues begin to arise when you Grind and try to Nail the Trick. When Grinding to perform tricks you have to flick the Wiimote. Doesnt seem to matter which way you flick it just as long as you keep your balance. We have already covered Nail the Trick but maybe its worth mentioning just how bad that is again, especially when it only registers your gestures 3 out of every 10 times. I am 100% certain that if the controls were not so broken, this game would have been much more enjoyable, despite its wrinkly, dated feel.

Visually its a mixed bag as with any ported game. The cut scenes are top notch, featuring smooth textures and very minimal clipping issues. In game however as was the case with Call of Duty 3, two colours seem to plague the environments and the character models are indistinguishable. Animations are very nice as long as your not falling off the skateboard and experiencing a wonky rag doll effect or hopping off your skateboard to climb walls in which your limbs will appear to be attached by skin alone. Call it lazy on the developers behalf but with two amazing looking games currently on the market (no point for names, you know which ones Im talking about) games of this visual calibur should not be allowed to pass the testing stage. They even try to have some particle effects as well as the odd newspaper floating by in the wind, both that flop by as if they are a glitch in the system.

Activision has made a lot of Wii games this year; Guitar Hero was is outstanding, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance has filled many nights with blissful joy and up until recently, Tony Hawk has been solid enough to warrant several playthroughs. However this is not one of those games, in comparison to some of the poorly ported and crafted Wii games I have played this year Proving Ground is one of, if not the worst. Where as it may be coming along in age on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, it cannot even entice Wii gamers to play it for a considerable length of time. Tony Hawk needs a make-over or a big fat nail for the five year coffin it most surely needs until gamers are ready to delve back onto the virtual skateboard again.

Pros:
There is some content to the game, however

Cons:
Youll be lucky to find to urge to complete the game
Controls
The visuals look like something from an early Gamecube game
Tony Hawks age is beginning to show
Pop Rock music. Give us Guitar Heroes III track list instead