Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was an instant hit when it arrived on the PSone in 1999, but after seven sequels, countless ports, and newfound competition from EA’s skate, Neversoft was always going to have to go all out with Proving Ground to keep the series from going stale. Did they pull it off?

For the uninitiated, Tony Hawk has always been an arcade game - fast paced and totally unrealistic. Initially, there was just grabs, flips and grinds - a beautifully simple setup that led to ridiculous 50 trick combos even before the sequels added additional combo-friendly abilities. Over the last seven games, we’ve seen the addition of manuals, stalls, reverts, switch-ups, flatland tricks, the Natas spin, “Nail the Trick” and ever-growing fifty-gazillion point combos.

Of course, this time around there’s the pre-requisite current-gen polish on the graphics and animation, and it’s the best looking Tony Hawk game yet, but surprisingly, there was enough room on the controller for the addition of several new moves and abilities - each one falling under one of three distinct types of skating.

Career skaters are the rock stars of the skating world - out to invent new tricks, start their own clothing brand, and get on the front cover of all the magazines. This gives you the ability to shoot still and video footage of your skating, and the Nail the Trick, Nail the Manual and Nail the Grab abilities, which allow you to get really creative with your combos. For newcomers and those of you who missed Project 8, Nail the Trick mode is activated by clicking both analog sticks, and it slows down the action, and switches the view to side on. Now the analog sticks control the skaters feet - left stick for left foot, right stick for right foot - allowing you to make your own unique flip tricks.

Nail the Grab is activated by holding the left trigger while you’re in Nail the Trick mode - now the sticks control your hands, holding a direction to grab the board, and rotating to tweak the grab. You can also finger-flip using a quarter-circle flick, chaining multiples if you can nail the timing.

Nail the Manual is activated by holding the right trigger while you’re in Nail the Trick mode - now up and down on the sticks controls the alignment of your board with the ground, allowing you to land in a manual, and balance once you’ve landed. Letting go of the trigger while holding a direction flips out of a nailed manual, and keeps the combo going.

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This entry was posted by Tim Hanlon on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 7:17 am and is filed under Reviews, Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.