Could easily have been the best Skateboarding game in the franchise or other were it not for its technical deficiencies.
This new game, as much as I love every idea implemented, is made unplayable on the PS3 because its frame rate stutters/hiccups are completely unbearable. Not to mention that the loading times for everything are so terribly long that it's quite sad to go back and play the last PS2 Tony Hawk game and compare it to this PS3 sequel and think to yourself "Isn't the PS3 supposed to allow better games to be made?". It's only a little of the PS3's fault, it is an amazingly powerful machine, and that's where the trouble lies...it's probably too powerful. It's mostly the fault of, honestly...we, the fans. We demand a new Tony game every year and because of that, Activision makes Neversoft put one out in such a short amount of time. It's pretty much become Madden (blech). I believe that if, literally, six or seven more months were to have been spent on this game then Neversoft would have made their selves more familiar to the PS3's hardware and, in turn, everything would have come together much more nicely. Yet, we have to play a game that makes you constantly afraid of having a frozen screen just from starting a level!
I had the game for only literally 3 days before I said to myself "Okay, I can't stand this s*** anymore!". When the frame rate worked fine or the game was not loading (which was about 1/5 of the time), the mechanics and everything else in the game were thoroughly enjoyed to the point that I realized this was the best Tony game I have ever played. The graphics are definitely next gen, and the new game play element "nail-a-trick" is the absolute sickest thing I have ever seen in a skating game! This is definitely something that they should put in every subsequent game in the series! I am quite a fan of the new "earthquake" like landing effect but the overly exaggerated rag doll physics when you bail are just taking it too far. The only non technical flaws of this game are that the create a skater feature is so extremely bare bones to the point that the it is not even as good as when it was first implemented in the series, and that the create-a-park mode has been take out completely. Other than that, the game play in Project 8 is the funnest the series has given us.
It is just an absolute shame that PS3 owners have to deal with the technical deficiencies to enjoy 1/5 of what the game has to offer.