Tony Hawk is catching up with Final Fantasty in terms of how many sequels they can make out of the same exact game. The latest Tony Hawk, Project 8, is the eighth in the series and tries to take advantage of the next-generation consoles on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. However, when you get down to it, it is just another Tony Hawk game that works just like all the others and comes with few minor upgrades and improvements.
The most noticeable difference between Project 8 and previous installments are obviously the graphics. Being on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 there is a lot of processing power available to create much more detailed visuals and animations. The graphics have been improved significantly compared to the last Tony Hawk game; however, they are just on par with the average next-gen games. The lighting is often very bright in areas and looks great; water is used in several places and looks realistic, especially as you ride through it. And the overall detail of objects, when in high definition, looks great compared to previous Tony Hawk games. The animations are also very well done and each move looks as it should. The character models have also been upgraded significantly and they look very close to the actual skateboarders.
Outside of the new graphics, the biggest new feature in Project 8 is the 'nail the trick' mode. By pressing in both thumbsticks you will enter a matrix like mode that is extremely slow. In this mode you can flip the board in any direction you want. However, grab moves are not possible. This mode allows you to control exactly how many times you want to spin the board before landing. Landing in this mode is very tricky, because if you don’t let go of the thumsticks at the right time you are going to crash. The best thing about the 'nail the trick' mode is that you can continue to kick the board in different directions after first spinning it. For instance, you can perform a normal kickflip and let it spin around twice and then kick it into another type of flip and then land it all before slamming down onto the concrete.
The new mode is a neat idea, but doesn’t flow well with the game because it is so slow paced compared to the normal fast pace of the game. You are flying from rail to rail, doing back flips left and right, then you are going to enter an almost pause like state to do a few kickflips? The nail the trick mode is fun to play around with to begin with, but it gets old fast. You won’t want to use it and you will probably be more interested in doing a triple backflip off the top of a building.
Speaking of backflips, this is one of the new tricks that were included in Project 8. Although most of the time it seems very unrealistic that you would be able to pull off a back or front flip, they are still very fun to use and the tricks (when combined with grab moves) look insane. The flips are very easy to perform, land, and work well when combined with other flips and grabs.
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