Skateboarding games have come back into style recently, thanks to the popularity of Activision's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, which experienced widespread success on various consoles. In a mad dash to capitalize on the phenomenon, several publishers quickly gathered any licenses relevant to skating, assigned development teams to their projects, and hoped that their games would receive the same kind of reception that Tony Hawk did. Now, the push to get the next big skating game out the door has spilled over to the PC with the release of THQ's MTV Sports: Skateboarding Featuring Andy Macdonald. Though it's a fair effort that looks significantly better than its PlayStation counterpart, MTV Sports: Skateboarding is ultimately disappointing due to its average graphics, poor collision detection, and loose controls.
The fact that MTV Sports: Skateboarding is a port of the PlayStation version of the game gives a good indication of what you should expect from the overall visual quality. Fortunately, a few aspects have been enhanced to take advantage of the PC's higher resolutions. Overall, the game's textures look much better than the PlayStation version's textures, although their quality is inconsistent. For example, the enormous MTV texture and the brick textures in one of the first skate parks look fine, but in other areas of the park and on other levels, many textures suffer from severe aliasing problems.
The skate parks themselves are solid and have no noticeable problems commonly associated with PlayStation-to-PC ports, such as polygon warping, but the overall design quality of the levels does vary. Too many skate parks in MTV Sports: Skateboarding look like a generic abandoned warehouse with empty pools and half-pipes everywhere. At least there are a few environments that offer a break from the stereotypical design, such as exhibition park, lunar escape, and flyover, which looks similar to parts of the Los Angeles River. The 3D skater models fall into the same trap as many of the skate parks in that they're acceptable, but they don't really offer much variety. Aside from gender, there isn't much to distinguish one skater from another once you're in the game.
Because it's clearly derivative of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, MTV Skateboarding's gameplay could have been good, but the poor collision detection and equally poor controls really hamper the experience. Initially, you probably won't notice these problems, as the main goal is to pull off some simple tricks and combinations before you move on to the bigger and more complicated maneuvers. Tricks are accomplished by jumping in the air and using different key presses and directional motions to perform the particular move. You can also pull a number of tricks known as manuals, which essentially involve the skater doing different tricks on the board, such as handstands. Also, you can grind by jumping onto a rail and maintaining your balance by pressing two different keys. If the balance meter runs all the way to the left or right, then you will fall off the rail and not receive any points for the trick. Everything is kept relatively simple, which makes it very easy to get into the game right away. But as your arsenal of tricks begins to grow, so will your awareness of the game's problems.
The loose controls become a major source of frustration when you're playing MTV Sports: Skateboarding. Once you've gained some speed and you're able to jump incredibly high, you'll probably be able to pull off four- to five-trick combinations on a standard half-pipe so that the last trick is completed a split second before you make contact with the ground. Unfortunately, the controls can be so touchy that seemingly even without pressing any buttons or by lightly tapping in a direction at the end of a jump, your skater will either attempt to put in one last trick, or he will finish his last trick incorrectly. The sensitive controls can also disrupt your trick timing in midair.
Collision detection is an equally frustrating problem that occurs throughout MTV Sports: Skateboarding but nowhere near as often as in the stunt mode. Progressing through the first few levels of the stunt mode shouldn't be a problem. But when you get to about the sixth level, solid grinding skills become incredibly important - yet the game's collision detection for grinding is so inconsistent that it becomes very difficult to hone your skills. On some parts of a park, you'll be able to start a grind about two feet from the railing, but on other parts, you'll need a precise trajectory to start a grind. Even then, the problem of the touchy controls reoccurs, as sometimes your skater won't launch into the grind but will actually try to ride the rail in a normal stance. The worst flaw is when you're about to jump onto a rail that's slightly angled, but right before you start the grind, you fall through the floor of the environment. The collision detection is so bad that, after you crash, the skater will often just magically stick to the railing high above the ground.
MTV: Skateboarding offers a number of features to break up the core gameplay, such as the aforementioned stunt mode. The freeplay mode is perhaps the most useful because it gives you a chance to learn the mechanics of the game without worrying about your score or the amount of time left on the clock. The lifestyle mode is MTV Sports: Skateboarding's version of Tony Hawk's career mode. The problem with the lifestyle mode is that the scores set for each level can seem ridiculously high, so it may take a long while before you can advance to earn your skater additional skills and abilities. High-score mode gives you a chance to beat the high score on each individual park, but this mode is rather pointless since you're essentially doing the same thing in every other mode. And the MTV Hunt resembles a mode found in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater: You must scour each park to find MTV logos instead of Tony Hawk's videotapes.
The last two modes, survival and stunt, are probably the most entertaining, because their pacing is much quicker and you have much more realistic scoring goals. Survival forces you to pull off tricks to add more time on the countdown clock - the more complicated the trick or combination, the more time you get. Stunt mode, the only feature in MTV Skateboarding that isn't similar to one in Tony Hawk, is reminiscent of older skateboarding games such as the Game Boy game Skate or Die: Bad 'N' Rad. Skate or Die was designed in the manner of a platform action game: It forced you down a set path as you made your way past various obstacles by timing your jumps and weaving in and out. MTV Skateboarding's stunt mode also forces you along a fixed path and later requires you to be able to time jumps and weave to avoid obstacles.
MTV Skateboarding's multiplayer options are disappointing. There's no online play mode available, so you must merely sit side by side with your opponent at one computer. This is frustrating if you only have a keyboard, and the split-screen mode significantly cuts down the amount of the screen that you can see, which throws off your timing. One of the multiplayer modes attempts to pull off deathmatch-style confrontations in which you must knock the other skater off his or her board. This mode seems fun until you realize that both skaters essentially have equal characteristics, and one can easily just avoid the other.
MTV Sports: Skateboarding could have been great, but aside from the decent visuals and the soundtrack that features a good variety of artists such as Cypress Hill and The Deftones, all of its potentially enjoyable elements are negated because of the problems associated with flawed collision detection and controls. It's not an awful game; some players may be able to look past its problems and just enjoy pulling off different tricks. But you're bound to get frustrated as you try to pull off some of the more complicated maneuvers. The game's stunt mode is also a nice touch, but otherwise, MTV Skateboarding's lack of originality also hurts the game. If you want a version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, it's best simply to buy one of the many console versions or wait for the forthcoming release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 for the PC.
