Tony Hawk's Project 8 [X360]

Well backslide my stalefish and call me Ollie, it's another Tony Hawk game. As predictable as the seasons, Activision and Neversoft let loose another installment of digital skateboarding. Tony Hawk's Project 8 has been tuned to better take advantage of the Xbox 360, and tosses in one of the franchise's biggest innovations. Even still, very little about it will come as a surprise to most gamers.

Nail the trick is the above-mentioned revelation. It's a phenomenal concept, and brings silicon skating closer to its real-life roots. Using the analog sticks, players control their avatar's individual feet to manipulate the board in mid-air -- essentially creating their own trick. While doing this, time slows down, and the camera zooms in for dramatic display. It's breath-taking, and is a refreshing departure from the rapid-fire vert/revert/manual/grind repetition the gameplay has evolved into over the years. You'll find specific nail the trick goals, or can activate it yourself -- even online -- by clicking both stick while in the air. Nail the trick also proves that developers don't need crazy new controllers in order to innovate.

The rest of the game is just about what you'd expect. The story is yet another tale of Tony Hawk looking for the best local skaters to join him for cookies and juice or whatever his intentions are. However, Project 8's continuous ranking system as you progress is a novel way to monitor how far you've come and how far you have left (if you couldn't guess, you want to make it to the top eight). Likewise, the game smartly dishes out stat upgrades in progressive fashion.

You're given a large, open world in which to skate on and explore. Many tasks have three skill levels, both inspiring replay and keeping things moving for less experienced players. While wide open, Project 8's environments are definitely sectioned off into various themes: skate park, school, amusement park, etc. These areas begat old-school timed runs with laundry-list goals that recall the series' golden years. They're also packed with some of the sickest lines in the series. It's odd, however, that Tony Hawk games have never embraced the multi-tasking style of Acclaim's old Aggressive Inline. Thus, you can only really be on one task at a time, instead of getting a list of active goals and being able to complete them at your leisure.

After eight installments -- each introducing new elements -- your skater has a ton of things he or she can do. Nothing has abandoned, so feel free to natas spin, wallride, spine transfer, skitch, flip, wallplant, and get off your board to your heart's content. Building up your special meter gives you focus control, which slows down the world to allow more precision trick execution. A handy tutorial runs this all down if you've gotten rusty, and even rewards you with an achievement at the end, to boot.

Project 8, like previous titles, is laid out as much like an adventure game as it is a sports title, and the load-free world supports this. There is a problem, however: A skateboard is not always conducive to roaming around, and it's definitely no good for precision mobility. You'll find yourself ping-ponging around tight spaces, and braking isn't as effective as it should be. The game has always trained us to hold the ollie button to gain speed, but letting it go makes your character jump. Thus, trying to stop with it held is useless, but letting the button go will have you leap away from your intended target. The fact that collision detection on thinks like S-K-A-T-E letters leaves something to be desired doesn't help the flaw.

Another point of gameplay contention is speed. Skaters seem to move slower than they ever have before. Even with full stats and a full super meter, you'll be rocking your torso to try to get your onscreen character to pick up the pace. The game feels choppy anytime you're following another character (like a photograph/videographer), further making the game feel like molasses.

Multiplayer is great fun either over Xbox Live or in two-player split-screen. The only new mode is Walls, which replaces some of the older battle game types like slap and firefight. It's reminiscent of the cycle battle from Tron: Each skater has a 2D trailing behind them. Your mission is to cause a rival to smack into your wall, with them falling down and you earning a point. It's a good example of thinking outside the box, but at the same time isn't much fun at all.

All other multiplayer modes are repeats from past Tony titles. Combo challenge is probably the most entertaining multiplayer mode: Set a combo score, and the first one to hit it wins. Of course, it's just cool to skate around with a bunch of other players online, messing around and talking to each other. What would be nice to see are game types where you try to get the best grind, manual, or nail the trick in a given amount of time. The single-player has bail-centric objectives; why aren't there any multiplayer options to follow suit?

Being developed specifically with next-gen in mind, Project 8 obviously course looks a lot better than previous installments. Unfortunately, it still trails behind the competition when put up against other next-gen titles. While the environments look realistic enough, the character models are a bit weak: Cover athlete Tony Hawk, for example, sort of resembles a zombie. While it's obvious the focus was on animation, the graphics still could've been pumped up more.

A major boon to the game, though, is the elimination of any load times in single player. And they're not even hidden behind streaming tunnels like in American Wasteland. No matter how much you play, you'll constantly marvel at this fact.

The soundtrack to Tony Hawk games rarely disappoints. Project 8 has a slew of hits from huge artists, and runs the gamut on variety. Gnarles Barkley, Slayer, Kool & the Gang, and Dead Milkmen are just some of the artists contributing songs. If every track was listed in the instruction book, it would've doubled in size, and maybe required a thicker jewel case. Voiceovers do their job well, and sound effects pay attention to detail.

Tony Hawk's Project 8 is quite simply a good game. If you're looking for new levels to trick on and a new story mode to play through, it's money well spent. Nail the trick is the type of awesome addition this series desperately needed. Project 8 could've been a 5-star game, however, if the publisher wasn't so determined to cash-in with annual holiday sequels. With more time to tweak the control, increase the speed, boost the graphics, and add in some new multiplayer options, Project 8 could've been legendary. But once again, this series does enough to get us to bite on a purchase, and chew contently afterwards.