Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (PS3)
| Publisher: Activision | Developer: Neversoft Entertainment |
| Genre: Extreme Sports | Release Date: October 9, 2007 |
| ESRB: Teen |  More Info on this Game |
Recently, Activision and Neversoft dropped into our offices to show off a new build of Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, the ninth title in the venerated Tony Hawk series, and the second title developed primarily for HD generation consoles. While we remained a bit guarded after our frustrating experiences with the lackluster Tony Hawk's Project 8, a few minutes with controller in-hand warmed us up what THPG will offer you when it releases later this year.
It sounds like while the plot of Proving Ground will find you, a young skater, working your way up the echelons of the skating world, like many of the past titles, it won't have the singularly directed focus of Project 8. While you'll be getting respect, sponsorship, and fame, you'll have a variety of ways to do it. In past games, you'd do the usual "zero to hero" route, but maintain a certain degree of balance. However, in the new title, expect to see your skills vary according to your play style. Some of us have referred to it as "Tony Hawk's RPG," and while you're not exactly busting out with a skater guild or casting Christ Air, the leveling system feels like it's strongly broken down into character class.
Firstly, you'll have the career class, which is a path for the more mainstream skater. Here, you'll get sponsorships from slightly more household names, and go for the sort of fame that makes people like Tony Hawk a household name. Hardcore guys will go for the big stunts, aggressive moves, and massive underground cred. Street class is about pulling off hot moves in urban locals. Perhaps the most intriguing one, however, is the rigger class, which is exemplified by the likes of skaters like Daewon Song. In rigging, you'll put together crazy combinations of stuff in the environment, and pull off the trick. It's a bit like Daewon's crazy rails-to-wallie-to-rails-to-schoolbus stunt in front of the high school in Project 8, but stretched out as a means of building stats
With each Hawk title comes a new gameplay feature, and this year's no different. While last year brought us Nail the Trick, which felt completely awkward and difficult to pull off, this year will give you Nail the Manual, and Nail the Grab. Associate Producer Yale Miller reassured us before playing that the biggest detriment to Nail the Trick in Project 8, the camera, has been pulled back to make things flow much more intuitively. Sure enough, after ten minutes of tinkering around with it, he was right. Nail the Manual requires a little more grace, and you won't be able to hold it nearly as long as manuals in past games, from what we can tell, but it flows effortlessly from a landed combo.
We also can already tell that we'll be bigger fans of Nail the Grab, but that's also likely due to our play style। We're glad to see that the "Nail the" features have gotten some much needed camera improvement; it was among our biggest complaints about last year's game, and it's gotten some tweaks। We sense that in order to get the game out on time in October, Neversoft couldn't toss in "Nail the Grind," but we imagine that it's not something they would deliberately ignore. Oh well.
Besides the new "Nail the" features, you'll also have the Aggro Kick. By tapping the right bumper or R1 button with careful timing, you'll be able to gain much more velocity than you could with the traditional autokick, or by simply holding down the jump button. It's very useful for clearing huge gaps, or simply for setting up some big vert moves. Think of it as a massive speed boost, and you'll have an idea of how it works; thankfully, the speed isn't too overwhelming once you've started aggro kicking. In regard to the rest of your repertoire, anyone who's put in his or her fair share on the Hawk series over the years will feel comfortable with grabbing a controller and whipping out some grinds and kickflips.
Another new feature that we got to see more of was the Skate Lounge. You'll be able to collect items within the in-game environment and add them to your lounge. We asked Miller if any of this would translate over into Home trophies for PS3 owners, but it appears that there won't be a crossover of Proving Ground with Sony's upcoming program। Nevertheless, the idea of creating a hub of sorts for you and online friends to jump in and hang out together should feel very familiar for PS3 owners, and intuitive for gamers regardless of platform. It's also a place to watch unlockable videos and show them off to a captive audience. We're also happy to hear that, according to Miller, you can jump into online games without having to exit your existing single-player game, save, and go to the game menu to play over Xbox Live or PlayStation Network.
Game Information 
