It is the best Tony Hawk game in years, but this title is still very disappointing.
User Rating: 6.8 | Tony Hawk's Project 8 X360
Project 8 starts off very easy, a bit too easy if you ask me, but then when you get right into the top 50, things start to change for the worse. It becomes more frustrating than fun. Once you get into the Top 50 there aren't many challenges left for you to do, so your kinda stuck trying to get the Sick titles, which make you do insane things. An example, not taken from the game, is having to manual down the street, hold, then grind along a railing for 100 feet, then finally pull off a clean 540 Rodeo McTwist. Now as fun as that may be, there are a lot of things wrong with the mechanics. It seems the balancing in the game is harder than previous titles, which stops you from actually grinding 100 feet. Now, I am not a skater myself, but I do a couple of people who do, and I watch boarding movies a lot. Tony Hawk titles take everything out of perspective for what skating is about. There really are combos when it comes to real life boarding. Sure you can do combos, but in competition they only get you so many points. THP8 does no good with it. Instead it makes you go out of your way to clear gaps and do impossible things. Once, just once, I would like to see the birdman himself try one, I bet he couldn't do it. All in all, this game is just more frustrating that fun, which I probably have stated before.
The graphics and the sound in this game are really improved over the last TH, American Wasteland. The acting is a lot better this time around, and there is a whole new list of music ranging from 80's music to present time. The graphics are superb, and dominate any other TH title. But these two things alone, don't save the game. Even though American Wasteland had lesser graphics, I still had way more fun with it.
Really, the only thing that actually saved this for me was the multiplayer. Being able to play over XBL or with a friend is fun, not that I couldn't do it in American Wasteland though. The only problem with it, is it gets really repetitive, fast.
Hopefully in the game installment, Mr. Hawk will take away the frustration of P8, and make the Sick missions, not so impossible. Maybe add in a couple things from the past titles that made them fun, and perhaps you will have a game to top the third Tony Hawk.
