This is a disappointing game.
When it comes to tricking, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is again a different experience form the traditional game. Classic moves such as the manual and revert ability have been taken out, so tricking goes back to essentially one jump for each score. To link tricks together, you'll have to grind; plain and simple. To counterbalance the lack of huge combos, trick gates have been added, shoving the screen into bullet time to rack up huge strings of moves. Also included in the trick attack mode is the ability to grab double and triple point modifiers, which instantly add a ton of points to the trick total. As a bit of a downside, however, trick gates aren't available for multiplayer since they utilize a slowdown effect, making overall point totals much higher in the single player mode. The special moves have been revamped as well, having the A button combined with either 1 or 2 in mid-air to perform an over-the-top animation specific to your character. These moves seem to be inspired directly from SSX Tricky, having characters flipping and spinning with no regard to realistic physics. The style may be hit or miss depending on the player, but there's something awesome about seeing Tony Hawk torpedo forward like Superman over rooftops in Hong Kong. It is, of course, amazingly over the top, but it seems to work well within the context of the game. All things considered, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam plays pretty well as a freshman effort on Wii. Newcomers should get used to the main controls in the first few runthroughs, and will learn to wall-ride, wallplant (ideal for shortcuts), grind, and pull off insane special moves quickly, and be able to provide adequate challenge to other players in no time at all.
Unfortunately, not everything about Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is all that impressive. For starters, the presentation of the game is very iffy, including everything from low-res cut-scenes and a rough menu interface to an overall lackluster graphical engine. The game runs in both 480p and 16:9, but the general look is pretty low poly and last gen. For some reason, all the videos within the game are compressed in quality as well, a few of them worse than the exact same video we've got in our media section below.
And while the main audio in the game is decent, offering a ton of oddball commentary and an impressive 40 music tracks, there are still a few strange issues. The ability to create a custom soundtrack from the game's song list has been included, letting you select which songs to listen to and which ones to pass up while skating. Oddly enough though, there's no way to listen to a sample of the songs while building the list, so you'll either know the song by title and artist, or you're out of luck. In addition, band and song names are never shown on-screen aside from the actual play list menu. When a kick-ass tune starts up, we want to know who it is we're listening to, and with music from Motorhead, Iron Maiden, White Zombie, and Anti-flag we're surprised the game doesn't show off its above average track list. It may seem like a minor gripe, but part of what makes Hawk games so awesome is thrashing to your favorite tunes, and Downhill Jam makes working with the music a hassle. We'd like to see the audio interface improved on for a potential sequel, as well as the ability to add our own custom music via SD card.
It may be a bit flawed, but Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam still shaped up to be a pretty entertaining racer on Wii. In no way does the spin-off game stand up to Project 8 on the other next generation consoles, but as a “popcorn flick” equivalent to Hawk games, Downhill Jam is a decently entertaining and innovative game nonetheless. A somewhat dated graphical look hurts, though the game runs in 480p and 16:9 to counteract it. And while in-game music is a hassle to work with, there are some killer songs in the 40 track list. The stylistic look of the game is going to be hit or miss for gamers, and whether you love it or hate it, your opinion is justified. Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam is an odd game, but it still can be a blast to play, and the replay value goes up a ton when you throw a few more Wii-motes into the mix. A redesign for a franchise is always risky business, and while there are definitely things to change in a potential sequel, Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam is a solid first step in a new direction for Wii players. More control customization and higher production value is definitely needed, though the game is conceptually sound and still pretty fun in short bursts.