Mon 26 Mar 2007
The Tony Hawk franchise has attained a rare status that only a select few games can claim: critic-proof.
Other games which fit this category include various sports franchises and Nintendo’s long-in-the-tooth icons - these games are for the established fanbase, and really don’t require much in the way of critical analysis, because they’re largely exempt from terms like ‘good’ or ‘bad’. There’s enough fans who will buy them, sight unseen, and unless the developer seriously upsets the apple cart, that’s exactly what they will do. Those who aren’t already fans need not bother even considering it, because if there’s a reason you didn’t like the series before, odds are that isn’t going to be addressed in this, or any future, iterations. The important thing is to keep the diehards happy.
Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland (the game that would otherwise be known as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 7, but thankfully developer Neversoft and publisher Activision have helped distinguish between the first four enjoyable Pro Skaters and the three bleh ones that don’t even bother to have the word ’skate’ in the title) is certainly more palatable than the wretched two Undergrounds that preceded it . . . but that’s like saying getting a wart burned off your feet with a laser is better than getting a rotting tooth pulled without anesthesia. Neither activity is particularly fun.
For the most part, though, THAW is the same as the THUGs - you’ve got the Story Mode that passes for some sort of innovation with this series, since not much else changes, and for those who can do without a narrative when it comes to their skating, there’s Classic Mode.
In Story Mode, you play one of a number of pre-selected no-name skaters, using the stereotypical teen angst of “oh, woe is me, no one ‘understands’ me” as its core. Spoiler warning: your avatar starts out as a nobody and eventually becomes a pro skater. Do yourself a favor and constructively use the hours I’ve just saved you slogging through lame attempts at satire with goals like “do a kickflip over actor Ben Whofleck’s head, and man, didn’t he suck in Pearl Harbor?”
For a game that’s supposed to represent a hipper-than-thou fringe subculture, there’s a bad sitcom mentality at work here. Most of THAW’s Story Mode seems firmly aimed at the gamer who feels they’ve recently just outgrown Pokemon, and I apologize to any thirteen-year-olds out there who are a little too smart for this tripe.
Like many other developers, Neversoft patiently waited their turn in line to be able to rip off Grand Theft Auto, and the end result is the elimination of levels in THAW - Los Angeles is one huge level open for your skateboarding bliss. So many lines in this vast urban playground, so little time . . . but thankfully, you can just hop off of your board and run around on foot while keeping your combo points racking up. (A couple more installments of this series and you’ll simply be able to score points by walking around holding your skateboard, shopping for new clothes and hairstyles. Combos will be based on how quickly you can get a mullet at the barber and then run down the street to nab a really cool pair of shoes.)
If you get bored of walking and skating, there’s always BMX bikes, because nothing screams Tony Hawk like riding a bike (which, admittedly, is a step up from driving cars in THUG). Activision’s O2 line of extreme sports titles (like Tony Hawk but with snowboards, bikes, surfboards, etc.) collapsed when the bottom fell out of the genre and the corpses of all the Tony Hawk clones that other publishers cranked out began to smell, so rather than risk a stand-alone BMX game, it’s now a ‘feature’ in Tony Hawk. Next year, in THAW 2: surfboarding.
Of course, as a nod to cynics like me who claim they used to really like the older THPS games, there’s Classic Mode, which has ‘old-school’ levels with ‘old-school’ timed goals and none of that new fangled streaming levels and weak attempt at a plot. Sorry, guys, no dice. These levels either aren’t as smartly designed as the THPS classics, and those levels that are essentially the old levels repackaged . . . I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: these levels looked better on the Dreamcast in 2000 than they do on the Xbox, PS2, and GC in 2005, and that just shouldn’t be.
The irony is that this franchise has been around long enough to be able to actually attempt a stab at some sort of nostalgia, but playing Classic Mode just made me want to pull out the old Pro Skaters, create some new avatars, and play them.
If there’s a saving grace to THAW, it’s the online modes on the PS2 - and finally Xbox - and in my opinion, this is the only thing worth bothering with the game for. This part is still actually fun.
The Tony Hawk franchise is like a popular, top-of-the-ratings TV show whose creators are driven by the money rather than any sort of creativity, and just keep cranking out new episodes, even though half the original cast has since left and the writers are dipping into the bottom of the barrel for ideas. It’s sad to see sequelitis claim one of the few truly original styles of gameplay to debut the past ten years, and even sadder to see a game that once had a very anti-establishment, cutting edge vibe become a bloated, marketing-driven self-parody of itself.
It’s hard to believe that a skateboarding game has become as popular with such a wide audience as this franchise has, and that fairy-tale sort of unexpected success makes it so annoying to watch the series dive head-first into repetitive mediocrity - I guess sales can justify cranking out a new disc every twelve months, but I find it hard to believe that more gamers aren’t getting bored out of their skulls with this.
Of course, what I think is irrelevant. As I said in the opening, Tony Hawk is critic-proof, so by this point, you’re likely either agreeing with me about the sad decline of a once-great name, or hating me for ‘unfairly’ blasting one of your favorites. There’s a third group, those who really don’t care about Tony Hawk one way or the other, and they may have the right idea, because they’re certainly not missing much in THAW.
