Difficulty:

Very Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Broken"

(+) there's multiplayer, though probably nobody will want to play with you

(-) Wii remote controls are a mess; nail-a-trick mode is riddled with unresponsive Wii waggle; no other single player modes other than the dreadful story mode; cheat codes can unlock a few of the levels but why not all of them?; possibly one of the worst washed up Wii ports in the history of its release; this game exists

When people bought a Tony Hawk game, most of the time they know exactly what to expect. Just a skating game with hip hop and rock music and a realistic level, pulling off tricks for points or doing jobs for other people. None of the Tony Hawk games are remarkable by any means, mainly because most of them are one in the same. Except I was moderately pleased by Tony Hawk's Underground 2 with the inclusion of parody characters to skate with like Shrek and a Call of Duty soldier. The PS3 and 360 versions of this game include online play and also a level system that is connected with one another, but even those versions still feel half baked and there just wasn't enough effort to make a worthwhile game. But we're not talking about those versions, we're talking about the much inferior Wii version that falls short even less.

Let's get a quick run-down on the few positives first. The graphics are decent, the skater looks alright as do the environments, but nothing that will dazzle you in any way. There is also a decent amount of multiplayer modes, my personal favorite is HORSE because you can change the word to any other word and that could be funny.

I'll try and go easy and not be too harsh, but Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is an unresponsive mess. You can unlock three levels and all but one skater through cheat codes, but not all of them. You'll have to do the story mode, which is nothing short of disaster. Most of the goals require the nail-a-trick mode which is slow-mo in the air. The controls for it are really bad though, which require you to jot the remote or nun-chuck forward, but the game won't respond to your commands half the the time and you're skater will remain in the air motionless instead of finishing the dang trick! I had to reset my Wii numerous times and go back to the same trick but the same thing would happen every time! That was until I had to lie down because I threw both of my hands out with the constant jerking and was aching for two or three days. Then I gave up on the game entirely, I'll take a dollar or two for anyone who wants to buy it off of me (don't take it the wrong way). So I can forget unlocking the rest of those levels for multiplayer mode then, but nobody would really want to play this with me anyway due to the bad controls, so why even bother! And worse yet, there are no other single player modes aside to the dreadful story, so what other options are you left with?

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground on the Wii could have been a decent, not great, not even that good, decent game if the controls work like they're supposed to, but they don't. Either get this on another platform or stay away from it entirely. You'd be better suited getting Tony Hawk's Underground 2 or any other Tony Hawk game for that matter. At least Proving Ground gets the realism point down, because like a skater I have a bruised arm.