Every year I look forward to the new Tony Hawk game that I know is coming. This year was no exception with Tony Hawk's Proving Ground. I have to credit my desire to play these games to DS's very own Matt. He showed me how great these games were and taught me how to play them. Much love to you, Matty. I always enjoy the sense of accomplishment playing one of these games brings. Destroying high scores, finding out of the way gaps and items, and chaining together ridiculously long combos were, and still are, the hallmark of any TH game. If you were hoping that this year's Proving Ground was going to be something different, you may have it confused with a game called skate (which is a great game in it's own right). I will say that the game is definitely better than American Wasteland and probably marginally better than Project 8, but all in all, is still basically what you'd expect from your average TH game.

The game starts out with you being a new up and coming skater (surprise!) and you basically run around and accomplish missions to progress through the game. The game breaks your skater's journey down to three different branches:

Riggers – Skaters who create what they skate. These guys look at everyday objects and try to figure out how to incorporate said object into their tricks. Cars, railings, pipes, plywood, awnings, nothing is off limits to these guys.

Hardcore – These guys are the, uh, hardcore skaters. No, really. I'd like to say something more profound or even more defining about them, but that's pretty much what gets explained. I saw this part of the game and laughed out loud.

Career – These are the skaters that most people will associate with. The Tony Hawk's, Bam's, and Burnquist's of the world. Also pretty self-explanatory, but not as ridiculous sounding.

You're welcome to focus on one tree aspect if you like, but to progress, you'll have to eventually work on all three. Career is what you expect most out of a TH game. This tree gives you the nifty Nail the Trick mode and eventually allows you access to Nail the Grab (which was pretty neat) and Nail the Manual (which was akin to being beat in the face repeatedly with a large wooden mallet). It's not that Nail the Manual is super difficult. I just sucked at it.

The rigger tree was pretty interesting to me. Having skated many, many moons ago, I was fascinated to see an aspect of skateboarding that I never really considered. This branch also allows you to have a create-a-park feature on the fly that you can use during any level that you're playing through. Pretty useful for getting to hard to reach areas or to continue sick grinds or tricks around the city.

Which brings us to the hardcore tree. This tree gave you the ability to push off the board faster. Seriously. That's what hardcore skateboarding gets you, folks. The ability to skate faster. Wow. Hold me down. I'd like to say there's more to this, but if there was, I didn't see it. It almost seemed like they did a throwback to the days where skaters were perceived as some sort of deviants who just rebelled, ignored authority, and were considered vandals. Honestly, it was more comical than anything, and I really hope that was their intent.

Overall, the game is more of the same that we've seen in previous installments in the series. You ride around on your board, doing random missions for people. There are spots where you can pull off types of tricks to increase your abilities in a certain area. Start a grind line at a challenge spot, and you get ranked Am, Pro, or Sick depending on how far you make it. For the record, to get Sick, you have to be amazing. Progressing through the game allows you access to other areas like Baltimore and Washington D.C., where you continue to perform for even more people and so on, and so on. There's even arcade machines in each area that allows you to play each area like the original titles. You get a time limit and a list of things to do. Personally, this was one of my favorite parts of the game.

Final Thoughts

Now, I know a lot of people are asking the same thing: Chris, you haven't told us what we want to know: Which game is better? THPG or EA's skate?

The truth is, neither game really is better. TH has a very arcade-like, friendly, pick up and play approach. Anyone who has a passing interest in skateboarding, has an average ability at playing video games, could play TH and enjoy themselves for hours. Skate is clearly targeted towards people who actually know how to skateboard, which is evident from their control scheme. I can't honestly tell you that TH is better than skate anymore than I could tell you that the 360 is a better system than the Wii or the PS3. Each one offers something the other doesn't, and personally, that's a good thing. I like that the TH crown finally has some decent competition to push the Neversoft team creatively and I think that if each title sticks with what it does well, we as fans will be the winners in this competition.