With the Tony Hawk series rolling strong after eight consecutive years, one wonders how much longer it will be before we start seeing the Birdman perform tricks on a wheeled walker. It's not quite time to order the adult diapers, but it's starting to get a little old. Tony Hawk's Proving Ground tries to give the aging series a shot of adrenaline by switching up the environments and giving players multiple storylines to follow. Yet the core skating engine and play mechanics offer few new twists, with most of the new features coming off as superfluous fluff rather than essential additions.

Concrete Jungles

One of Proving Ground's biggest changes is its setting, with players skating through select portions of Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC. Each city is seamlessly connected to one another to form one large area, and the streets are brought to life with roaming pedestrians, traffic, rain, and even wind-swept trash and debris. Once again, the basic premise is to skate around each free-roaming region to complete various challenges. You begin the game as a "nobody" and must gradually build up your created character's attributes while adhering to three skater lifestyles: hardcore, career, and rigger.

Each style is represented by real-life pros that dole out specific goals to accomplish after you speak to their on-screen personas. Career skaters like Tony Hawk are in it for the money and exposure, while hardcore skaters like Mike Vallely enjoy pushing limits (and pedestrians) in their fanatical devotion to the sport. Riggers are the MacGyvers of the skating scene, going out of their way to build contraptions that make the crazier stunts possible. Each skater style focuses on three distinct areas to master, which involves learning some new techniques along the way.

Building a Better Skatepark

Hardcore skaters, for example, teach players how to build up speed, carve bowls, and check people with a few well-timed button presses. Riggers teach you how to climb to higher areas, position objects like ramps, and modify existing structures for new skating opportunities. Players can place up to 30 items within the game world, which will please those who like to explore, climb, and tinker around with the environments. Pressing the back button opens up a rig edit mode, where you can choose from various pieces, rotate them, and snap them into place with the analog stick.

Career skaters use flashy moves to get sponsorships, so objectives here involve using the "nail the trick" system introduced in last year's Project 8. Proving Ground extends the system by adding "nail the grab" and "nail the manual." Each "nailing" mechanic involves pressing down both analog sticks while you're airborne. This effectively turns your alter ego into Neo from The Matrix, at which point manipulating either analog stick causes the board to spin, tilt, or flip in slow motion. All involve a keen sense of timing to land cleanly, which can be difficult since it's hard to judge the board's position relative to the environment or your skater's feet.

Playing Dress Up

Satisfying objectives from each of the three classes earns players points that can be spent on upgrading skills in each discipline, making certain techniques easier to perform or opening up more options. Each city features six types of street goals as well, from races and skill challenges to photo ops and arcade mini-games. As in previous Tony Hawk titles, Proving Ground's biggest strength is the fun associated with building your character, from his core skating stats to the many accessories, tattoos, and clothing options he can wear.

Tying the three classes together is the ability to save video clips of your best tricks and aerial stunts to send to in-game "sponsors." One of the biggest surprises is how robust the editing tool is. Players can insert, remove, trim, and move clips; add up to three overlays and screen effects per clip; and even include music. By submitting videos to sponsors, you'll receive points based on how well the clips show off the action and how close they follow the song's beat. Video challenges are also incorporated into the game, where players have to perform specific tricks at specific points and record the footage.

The effort spent on the video editing feature and extras such as the personal skate lounge (think "the crib" in the 2K Sports games) is impressive, but it seems to come at the expense of improving the core gameplay. Manually traveling from city to city is annoying, and the same career objectives are repeated over and over again. Even with three skater classes, the story mode is surprisingly short, lasting approximately six hours. Thus, the replay value is tied to how much you enjoy mastering the optional street goals or competing online. The Xbox Live options help overcome some of the single-player deficiencies, as you can take your custom character and create or join games (even wager cash) with up to seven friends in nine play modes.

Unstable Ground?

There are only so many times you can eat a Big Mac without wondering what a Whopper tastes like, and the problem with Proving Ground is that it comes off the heels of EA's invigorating Skate. Proving Ground is still an extremely accessible game with sharp graphics, large environments, and a tried-and-true control scheme. It’s also too familiar, however, with the new features feeling more like distractions than improvements. Proving Ground is far from a bad game, but it's a disappointment nonetheless. That's what happens when creativity gives way to complacency.

Review by: Scott Alan Marriott
Video Produced by: Mike Benson