Let me get this right off. I am not one of those EA skate fanboys, who thinks that the Tony Hawk games are the worst video games ever created. I loved and still love the Tony Hawk games. This year however, THPG looked completely ridiculous as far as a skateboard simulator compared to EA skate. That doesn't mean it's a bad game, just not as realistic. The gameplay in Tony Hawk is still great and pretty easy to learn. However, this is probably not the Tony Hawk game for newcomers to jump on. Most of the people who play Tony Hawk games have been playing them either since the original, THPS2, or THPS3. All the combos and such are drilled so deep into their heads that they don't even think about what tricks to do, they just do them. Any beginners to the series will struggle immensely with this game, because even the Am difficulty on each challenge is an actual challenge. The game's class system is a cool idea, but it's involvement in the game isn't as much as the Tony Hawk people exaggerated it to be. Really the only thing the different classes do is open up different sponsors. If you do mostly career stuff you will get sponsors like Element, Volcom, Plan B, etc.. If you do hardcore you will get sponsors like Vans, Flip, Baker, etc. If you do rigger stuff you will get sponsors like Almost and DVS. The only difference between sponsors is if you pick a company as a sponsor you will unlock some new piece of equipment either a board or a t-shirt or jacket that you wouldn't unlock until later on in the game. Really if you play through the game you end up doing all of the classes anyway and then impressing all the pros so they join your team, then making a video. The Tony Hawk people kind of lied when they said the ending of the game changes based on what choices you make. You end up doing all the lifestyles, getting all the pros, and making a video. Nail the trick is improved, but it is still not very realistic. I don't know whether the intention was to make it pretty weird, but I always feel strange when I can ollie up in Nail the Trick and do 5 kickflips. Nail the grab is a great new feature that compliments Nail the trick. Nail the manual is pretty difficult due to the camera angle and really not very practical to use while playing the game. The graphics are decent, but there are a lot of weird glitches. The voice acting, terrible but that's because whoever writes the script for these things sucks. The video editor is superior to Skate, but it goes to waste because you have to manually start video recording something compared to in Skate where you are constantly being recorded. This is very frustrating as sometimes you will do something totally awesome just out of nowhere, but it wasn't filmed. Overall, this is a good Hawk game, but I think they tried to take this year's version in a more realistic direction than previous years, which made them look second class compared to Skate's realism. I know this sounds odd, but Tony Hawk needs to go back to what they did during the THUG games. EA has them beat on realism. Tony Hawk will only survive if they go bigger and badder, because then they will provide an alternative to the ultra realistic Skate world.
Other Helpful Reviews for Tony Hawk's Proving Ground
I'll be the first to admit, Tony Hawk hasn't reinvented the wheel this year. But it is great fun. If you like realism in skating, this is not the game for you. But all the "nail the" features, as well as so... Read Full Review
This game had some bad reviews from some people, but from me this is game is very well done, but there are some issues with the game that I am very picky at. Gameplay - 8.5 The controls are pretty much the same from ... Read Full Review
