Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

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Registered: 12-12-2004
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Tony Hawk: Project 8 mystifies me. It does.

Alright. We'll see a few Tony Hawks, and how they've improved.

Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2: Was pretty awesome. No way to combo out of verts unless you did clever grinding things out of it. Also, no way to tell when you were about to fall over while grinding unless you really paid attention.

This was fixed by...Tony Hawk Underground, which was simply frigging awesome in every way. Physics were improved, we had the reverts...etc. Maybe a few minor, irritating quirks.

Tony Hawk Underground 2 fixed most of those, including the 'female career skaters were lesbians according to the plot' thing from THUG1, as funny as that was. Things felt more solid, create-a-trick didn't suck. All was well, or so I thought.

Tony Hawk American Wasteland...well, frankly, we added some stupid crap, but it was a good idea. Honestly. It was highly playable, but man we didn't need this Parkour thing going on, but it made sense that we had it.

And now we come to Tony Hawk, Project 8.

What we've added:

- You don't actually have to revert off a vert to keep your combo running, but it helps a lot to do so anyway.

- The grind/manual guidebars simply ghost out and become transparent in the middle of a combo, so you know how you're about to fall over.

- Like a billion different mission things that would be totally awesome in create-a-park mode, including...a mini-create a park mode.

- Varying difficulty--Like, everything had its Am, Pro, and Sick ratings, so you could beat the game without getting all Sicks if you were so inclined, then later doing it without starting completely over.

- Nail A Trick--The game's gimmick. That is...you can spin the skateboard yourself in a ridiculous slow mo way that totally sucks. SEriously, there's more than enough in this game that we don't need this. Period. Which only makes the removed stuff more horrifying.

About...a billion times more corporate advertising!

What we removed! (!?1!?)

Female Custom Skaters--actually, any female skaters at all! ...unless you have the PS3 version. (!?)

Create A Park Mode --why would you rem--no, seriously..what? Why would you take this out, when you've added diagonally played objects in the mini-puzzle mode, and all sorts of new missions, and things I just gaze at longingly?

A good deal of the height/size modifiers in create-a-skater, period, end of story, are gone. There's an eerie amount o

Streaming level design--They added this in American Wasteland for the GC, but we don't get it in this one for the PS2? What? --WHAT?-- Apparently it's in the XBOX 360 and PS3 versions, so meh, I guess.

---

Anyway, to sum it up, Project 8 is what happens when you have three jars full of honey. You unscrew two lids, and you fill it with sugar. Then you fill all three with some spices. Then you proceed to add some angry bees, and put the lids back on.

Mattcrampy
Level: Smitemaster

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Registered: 05-29-2003
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And here I was thinking that the last good one was Tony 2. (I liked the earn-money-unlock-parks mechanic, and was disappointed to see it genericised in Tony 3.) Although I definitely admired the way one improved one's stats in the THUG subseries, and wish that SSX would steal it. (I have put fully a year's playtime into SSX3. No joke.)

I expect that only the power of the PS3 could handle the elaborate jiggle physics that THP8 borrowed from Team Ninja at the same time as the rest of the game.

As an aside, I fully expect this topic to provoke yet more outbreaks of behind-the-Banj speculation.

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Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

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I feel like there should be a documentary or something.

Yellow_Mage
Level: Master Delver
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I was quitely agreeing with you, but I haven't bought any of they latest ones because, "teh are da same gaem!" to me.

THPS4 was to me the best of the bunch. I didn't really play THPS2 that much, but that was the first truely amazingly good skate game. I got the PS1 version (the GBA version I first had is depressing), and it added all the good stuff into the series. THPS4 is wicked. THUG, I feel there is no go reason to have this game as it just felt odd at times tho' I haven't played it enough really. Project 8, ahh... umm... man, Tony Hawk's is so lost on me. It's the same game... oh man... *cries*

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"Sit and daydream, and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the idle seashore of the mind." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

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THPS4 felt inferior to THUG in every way. Particularly because THUG had females that didn't sound like they were injecting helium directly into their skulls, partially because I like mission-based in this day and age.

And it's...really not the same game. The UI and gameplay improvements have...with the exception of this game, been pretty steady. Project 8 had a bunch of good additions, but...man. Why lose Create A Park, with all those mission types? Seriously! D:

lakibuk
Level: Delver

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Last one i played was part 4. Great but getting very hard so i gave up. Lost interest in the series.
Do the later parts bring substantial changes (i mean gameplay not just new characters and skateboard themes) ?

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Karl
Blueskied Games (main site) - Gratis Spiele (german site)

Banjooie
Level: Smitemaster

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Every new one tends to fix some irritant in the UI, yes. Project 8 is starting to grow on me despite its massive failures.