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At one point while playing Tony Hawk's Proving Ground I was reminded of when Homer Simpson unintentionally tried to jump Springfield Gorge. I had to clear a “gap” in the street to complete a challenge. The gap in question was the size of a small park a level below where I was skateboarding. I sped up and skated up a tiny ramp at the edge of sidewalk that overlooked the gap. Once I hit the air, I pressed down on the
two analog joysticks to enter “nail the trick.” This mode allows you to do more complex maneuvres with your skateboard as the game slows down and you get a longer air time.

So as I'm soaring along in slow motion I start thinking, as Homer did, that I'm going to make it. I'm the greatest skater ever.

And then I notice I'm starting to slowly fall downwards and realize that I'm missing the over edge by a fair bit.

Granted, the drop is not nearly as far as Springfield Gorge, so I usually can land fine. And even if I “injure” myself, I can get right back up and don't need to airlifted on a gurney to be put in the back of an ambulance that crashes and causing me to fall back down into the gap. But this experience resonates with me as it's at the heart of the real problem here.

In the game, you play an up-and-coming skater who wants to make a name for himself. First, you have to impress the locals with some tricks. Then you need to get a sponsorship and skate your way to fame and success. To accomplish this, you need to complete a variety of story challenges to unlock new goals and areas and improve your skating skills.

What's nice about the game is the sandbox design of the game, so if you just feel like goofing around and doing tricks off of the environments, you can waste a lot of time. (That is, assuming you have unlocked enough of the city to play around in.) And you're able to build rigging so you have more things to play with.

But the problem, unless you're an avid skateboard gamer, you're probably going to be doing a lot of that as the challenges, even the simple non-story related street challenges get insanely difficult quite quickly. Sure, grinding's easy enough and you can get a handle on the slowmo tricks with a little practice. But much of the time, you need to do ridiculously impossible jumps or a perform series of tricks without stopping as you manual from object to object without falling down.

And if you get to a point where you can't seem to do the “simplest” of tricks, you may as well just give up.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground
Format: Playstation 3
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Neversoft
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Official Site: http://www.thpgonline.com/
Rating: 6/ 10

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G4 Canada (formerly TechTV Canada) launched in September 2001. G4 is the one and only television station that is plugged into every dimension of games, gear, gadgets and gigabytes. Owned Rogers Media Inc., the channel airs more than 24 original series. G4 is available on digital cable and satellite. For more information, see www.g4tv.ca.

Tech News on G4

'Tony Hawk' not for amateurs

January 22, 2008

By Adam Swimmer - G4 Canada