Tony Hawk: Ride
Review: Tony Hawk: Ride (Xbox 360, PS3, Wii)
Bad idea. Worse execution.
I'll go ahead and back up what most of the gaming industry has already come to realize, in saying that Tony Hawk: Ride is one of the bigger pieces of gaming junk that's come down the line in recent years. I'll admit my hopes were pretty low for this prior to being able to play it, but they didn't pick up once I had the actual item in my hands. It's a shame too, I loved some of the Tony Hawk games when I was younger, and I have really fond memories of playing through parts 2 and 3 with a buddy that was equally interested in the games at that point. It's amazing to me that Neversoft (and now Robomodo) has failed to recapture that sense of fun throughout these yearly releases, and I suppose it goes a long way towards proving that you literally can milk a franchise to death.
Ride is pretty much the equivalent of squirting dust out of cow's udder then. Your first look at the game and the skateboard accessory is a little bit deceiving, in that the board is actually a pretty sturdy piece of equipment, and actually feels well built. You've got multiple motion sensors on the front, back and sides of the board. The top of the board has a textured material to help your feet get a little more grip on it, it holds a considerable amount of weight with no problem, and the size is big enough to accommodate someone with a size 13 shoe, which kind of surprised me. There's basic control functions on the side of the board, the Home button, start, face buttons, and a D-Pad, and the board itself sits flat on most surfaces and still gives you enough of an angle to the back and front to allow for easy tilting. Really, it's not a bad looking toy, it's just a shame that it works so poorly with the actual game it's bundled with.
So yeah, once you boot up the actual game in your console of choice, that's where the problems begin. There's a relatively lengthy calibration process involved, requiring you to cover and uncover the sensors, and tilt the board in various directions according to a timer, which is thankfully a one time process (until the batteries die that is). Once that's done, you can jump into the game, which offers up two modes for one player, Road Trip and Exhibition. Road Trip is pretty much the career mode of the game, and you'll have three difficulty settings to start with. Casual, the easiest, puts the experience of Tony Hawk: Ride on rails, and it's not too dissimilar from that Sega arcade skateboarding game from a decade or so ago. With Casual mode, you'll guide Tony, a different character, or a created character through a series of challenges in each of the six stages offered, performing the tricks listed in an effort to nail all of the requirements before moving on. The big difference between Casual and the other two difficulties is that you don't need to worry about turning or direction, you only need to build up speed and keep your forward momentum going, and hopefully hit the tricks the game asks you to make. Even Casual is an exercise in frustration though, and it's easy to see why after your first few events.
The basics of the controls are this: You can Ollie and Nollie by tilting back and forward on the board, which are the easiest, and most basic of tricks to pull off. To perform a jump you need to kick back on the board quicker than you do for an Ollie, even though half the time it's a bit of a crapshoot as to which move you'll end up performing here. From there, once you're in the air, you can wave your hand or feet over the sensors and pull off a specific trick, which is where the real trouble starts. It's hard to tell where the sensor actually picks up movement, whether there's a specific height or distance from your hand to the sensor that you need to hit. Half the time the game gives you no response, you'll wave or shift about as much as you want and your on screen avatar will remain motionless on the board. Other times you'll get a response, but even then it's rarely the one you're going for. The game does offer some in-game tutorial videos (and the review copy came with a DVD as well) but neither of these end up helping you that much. If nothing else, it's frustrating to see someone pull these moves off so easily in a video, while you're doing the same thing at home and not getting a single result out of your efforts. Basically, Road Trip is nearly unplayable, even on the easiest difficulty. You'll struggle through it eventually, sure, but it'll take some Herculean effort to even want to struggle through the controls.
Exhibition is a little more entertaining, simply because you're not bogged down by the need to complete the tricks the game throws at you. Being able to skate around and explore without the need to complete objectives allows you to try and get acquainted with the controls, and if you insist on the playing the game, then I suggest jumping into this mode from the start. That said, even Exhibition is pretty disappointing, the world design is really sparse, so there's not that much to check out. I suppose because the game seems to be focused on straightforward movement, something similar to Downhill Jam, but that leaves little excuse for the bland design of each stage. If you go back to classic Tony Hawk titles, even the PS1 and N64 releases, they had some ridiculous imaginative takes on real world locations, offering up tons of crazy, and maybe a little nonsensical, ways for you to play around with a skateboard. Now that I'm actually playing around with a skateboard controller though, I'm stuck grinding on benches and rails, and merely going back and forth through empty swimming pools and boring half-pipes. Why can't I hop on the blades of a helicopter now? Stripping Tony Hawk of it's unique take on skating wasn't the brightest move they could have made, no matter how much heat they're feeling from the popularity of EA's Skate franchise.
So even if you're a die-hard fan of the Tony Hawk franchise up to this point, there's no way I could suggest you should check this out. The board itself isn't an awful idea, I suppose, but it's pretty much an unnecessary addition to a franchise that's already been on a downhill slope for quite a few years. When people suggest that they try to repair the Tony Hawk games, I sincerely doubt that anyone meant they should toss in a hundred dollar accessory to do so. The game itself feels broken, the controls are a mess, and the level design is horrid. It's not fun to play, and if you buy this at full price, then I automatically feel bad for you. It's one of worst sequel ideas I've ever seen, and it's certainly the lowest point the franchise has managed to hit, which is actually saying something.
