Tony Hawk...The Skateboarding Champ of Consoles

Tony Hawk is Skateboarding! (thank you Chaz Michael Michaels)

That sentence alone can perfectly illustrate the popularity of Tony Hawk's video game franchise. His games have been an undisputed champion for years and still going strong.

With the release of Tony Hawk's Project 8, he continued that excellence and tradition.

What is the game?
It is an arcade style skateboarding game. You ride around completing trick objectives and the like, by pulling cool combination of tricks in a row, and landing it without landing on your face. You can jump, grind, flip in the air, do a handstand on the top of a roof, and do a Peter Pan right off of a water tower. It is all here. The main focus of the game: Tony Hawk is looking to put an elite group of skaters together. You guessed it...his Project 8 team. Through a series of objectives, you will earn respect and prestige from taking out other pro skaters, or pulling a mile long manual...all while trying to become one of Tony Hawk's Project 8.

Tony Hawk has not changed much in terms of game play. If it isn’t broke...add a new feature. The new feature called "Nail the Trick" was a pretty fun and huge add-on to this year’s game. It allows you to change the way your feet interact with the board in mid-air...causing spins or flips or whatever you want, to the point of landing the trick.

It was really tough at first, but after 30 hours or so, you will have it down to a science (Okay, its more like 10 minutes). Besides that, we have mostly done a lot of this before.

Let's go through Korthman's List:
Uniqueness: Clone
-- Let's face it. In reality, it is the same game that we have played forever. It is Tony Hawk. This is not a bad thing, but everyone saying that this is a different game, must not have played the same game. You even play some level types as you have in the past (park, suburbia, school, factory).

Fun Level: Wish I could play more at first to gets boring
-- I had a super amount of fun earning silver or Sick on all of the different objectives around. Once you get those all done, I found myself just skating around, jumping around. The customize character thing is no good either...there is little fun to even make a new character. It is going to be a similar experience no matter how you look at it.

Glitches: Not too bad at all
-- The infinite point glitches slaughtered the leader boards. It is really annoying seeing some of those and knowing they are bull...then going on YouTube and seeing the same thing. There are a couple glitches here and they’re with graphics...that and some issues with grinds that are unrealistic to say the least. With the front of the board pointing down, I should not be able to grind any rail-like item around.

Buyable or Rentable: Buyable
-- It is so cheap now, why wouldn't you?
There is a lot to do for the price. It took me many tries to do some of the trick objectives and the feeling I got from actually finishing some of those were well worth the $15 I spent on the game.

Solo or Band? This is a solo game
-- You can play around with or against some online. You can have a couple with some buddies and play at someone’s house I suppose, but this definitely a 1 player experience.

How much I liked it? 8.1 out of 10

2 biggest reasons I liked it:
1. Objectives were fun and some were very challenging
2. Took me forever to beat it all

2 biggest reasons I did not like it:
1. Most achievements cannot be completed via the story mode
2. After you beat it all, it does not feel the same

2 areas I would change:
1. WAY better character create option
2. Leader board supervision

Similar Games?
You will like virtually any Tony Hawk game before this...minus the underground series (I don't know why, I just didn't feel it)