Tony Hawk's Project 8 Hands-On
We try to grind our way into the top eight (or at least get as close as we can) in our hands-on look at the new Tony Hawk game.
Neversoft is rightfully proud of its brand-new motion-capture facility. The famed developer of the equally famous Tony Hawk series has built a state-of-the-art mo-cap studio located in a cavernous warehouse section of its new digs in Southern California. It's not surprising that a big-time developer would have this kind of technology available in-house. What is surprising is how the Tony Hawk series, which has prided itself on being a remarkably accurate representation of skateboarding tricks and culture, has gone so long without motion capture. And this is just one of the new things we learned about the upcoming Tony Hawk's Project 8 during a recent trip down to SoCal to visit the Neversoft bunch and check out the game for ourselves.
The previous Tony Hawk game, American Wasteland, was the first TH game to use motion capture of any kind; the cutscenes in the game used the technology. While THAW for the Xbox 360 was more or less a port of the Xbox and PlayStation 2 version of the game, the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions of Project 8 have been built from the ground up specifically to harness the power of the next-gen consoles. With that much processing power and memory on hand, one of the first orders of business was to make sure that practically any move or trick found in the game was first captured in real life using the mo-cap studios.
What that entailed was approximately 63 days of mo-cap, which started at the beginning of the development cycle for Project 8 in February 2006. Along with in-house staff posing as amateur skaters and pedestrians, which you often (literally) run into when roaming the open world of Project 8, every pro skater featured in the game spent some time in the studio being filmed performing not only a number of "standard" tricks and skating moves, but also signature styles that are unique to that skater. One particularly dedicated pro, Rodney Mullen, spent a total of three days in the studio fine-tuning his tricks for the (multiple) cameras that were recording his every move.
In addition to dressing the skaters in the requisite spandex and light-capturing balls getup that you might be used to seeing pro ball players don once a year for video game mo-cap sessions, the Project 8 folks even went so far as to mo-cap the skateboards themselves. Not only were the bottoms of the boards fitted with the balls, but special strips were attached to the trucks. As a result, subtle details such as board and truck flex are captured in loving detail thanks to the wonders of mo-cap magic.
All of this technology and detail is designed to make the tricks in Project 8 look more realistic than ever. Whereas before, every trick was hand-animated by the enormously talented Neversoft art team, now, each trick will be based on the real-life move that was captured in the studio. That doesn't mean the animation guys can just take the rest of the year off, however; the job of tying the trick animations together so they flow in a realistic and believable manner is a key element to ensuring that all of the captured tricks play true in the game.
The focus on the moves and physics of skaters and their boards is indicative of the development mind-set behind Project 8. Departing from the narrative-heavy approaches found in the past few Tony Hawk games, Project 8 is focused squarely on the tricks. There's still a story in Project 8--Tony Hawk's looking to assemble a team of the eight best amateur skaters in the world, and your job will be not just to make it on the team, but to rise to the number one position--but, in the end, Project 8 is all about getting on your board and showing what you can do.
To show off your skills, a slew of different challenge types will be available to you as you scoot around the Project 8 urban and suburban environments. These include spot challenges, which are set up throughout the world, and you must meet various requirements to pass them, such as grinding a rail for a certain length or acquiring a huge amount of air in big-air challenges. Unlike instanced challenges, spot challenges are available at any time--to initiate a grind challenge, for instance, you simply start the grind near the starting point. Other challenges available in the game, such as puzzle challenges, require you to get from a starting point to an end point, and will let you move around a number of objects to create a "path." One puzzle challenge required us to maneuver through a number of rails and school buses, before grinding quickly around a flag pole and eventually onto a wooden crate. Puzzle challenges will test not only your trick skills, but your ability to lay out the objects available to you in such a way as to pass the challenge. It's not exactly a park creator (which won't be featured in Project 8), but it's pretty fun nonetheless.
Finally, we have to mention the bail challenges scattered throughout the world, which were among our favorite challenges. Here, the idea is to grab some air and then launch your skater off the board. The game's Havok physics engine kicks in, and your player flops through the air, bouncing off every tree, column, staircase, and bush he or she hits on the way down. The ragdoll physics are hilariously exaggerated here, and if nothing else, this mode is good for a few laughs.
Tony Hawk's Project 8 Quick Links
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- Activision
- Neversoft Ent.
- Skateboarding
- Release: Nov 7, 2006 »
- ESRB: Teen
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