Tony Hawk's Proving Ground: Career Skater

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, the ninth in the popular series, adds a new twist to the single-player story mode. This time around, gamers can choose to follow the path of the skate style that best suits their nature: Career, Hardcore, and Rigger. Each style offers different skill sets, which can be upgraded. You can choose to focus on one path and follow a single storyline, or experiment with the different types of skate styles to create a more broadly skilled skater.

Ultimately, you will have to choose one dominant style type. The path you select not only opens specific challenges, but unlocks different areas of the game world. Someone focused only on the Career storyline may see Landsdowne in Baltimore but might not see the Air & Space Museum. How you skate influences how you look. Hardcore guys will have scars and look tougher. Career gents are likely to be decked out in sponsor labels. Once you've completed a story path, you'll unlock a special uber goal specific to your skater type. You'll also have the chance to build your own team of pros. The available roster depends on which pros you met during the game.

Over the next few weeks, IGN will take a look at the three different skater types in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. First up, the Career Skater.

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Career Skater

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''Career skaters are the cats who are dedicated to winning trophies and earning cash for excelling in the sport they love. Tony Hawk and Bob Burnquist are two of the most notable of this group. Follow the Career path and you will receive mentorship from the poster boys of skating.

''Career skaters have three skills: Nail the Trick, Nail the Grab, and Nail the Manual. Those who played Hawk 8 will remember the innovated Nail the Trick system. It's back, with some slight tweaks to improve handling. Once again, when you click both thumbsticks time slows and the camera zooms in on your feet and board. The thumbsticks act as your feet, kicking the board in different directions. The timing windows for tricks and landing have been slightly widened, lowering the degree of difficulty for pulling off Nail the Trick (hoorah!). And the camera has been tweaked to offer a more stable angle when spinning.

The other Nail options are brand new, but operate on the same principal. Nail the Grab can be entered any time you are in Nail the Trick. Hold the Left Trigger and the thumbsticks work as your hands. You can grab nose, tail, and sides with either or both hands. And once you have a firm grip on your board, you can further tweak the grab with the thumbstick. You can even perform finger flips by swinging the thumbstick in a semi-circle. Those with some skill will transition between Nail the Trick and Grab moves to create some awesome slow-motion aerial feats.

Nail the Manual is a bullet time version of your average manual. Only now you have greater control over balance. Several new manual tricks have been added so that you can have a little fun. While you probably can't get all the way through Proving Ground using only the Nail moves, you can certainly pull off some eye-popping lines unlike anything seen before in the Tony Hawk series.

By completing Street Challenges (spot challenges, classic challenges, etc.) your skater earns skill points. These can be spent as you please to upgrade your skills. For every skill there are three levels of upgrades. These can be pretty sweet, particularly for Career skaters. Grab the Trick upgrades to perfect grabs and then trucks up grabs. Manuals upgrade to perfect ollies for better air and casper/anti-casper tricks. The more you upgrade, the more tricks you can throw down and the higher scores you can rack up.

During the Career storyline, you'll run into an old friend from Tony Hawk Underground. Eric Sparrow is a local favorite in Baltimore and still a total jerk. He challenges you to a competition at Landsdowne. Fortunately, Bob Burnquist takes an interest in you and shows you a few Nail the Grab moves. No matter how well you perform in the competition, you end up losing out to Sparrow, because the judges are a bunch of homers. This crushing defeat inspires you to take a three-city tour on a revenge mission to take Sparrow down.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground ships this fall. Check back at the end of August for IGN's look at another skating style.''

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