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I CAN NOT believe gamespot was generous enough to give Tony Hawk: Proving Ground a 5.0. This game is virtually unplayable on the Wii. It’s terrible.

I’ve played every major release of Tony Hawk for the Nintendo non-portable consoles (TH on Gameboy/Advance/DS didn’t appeal to me). I basically majored in 1, 2 and 3 in college. None of the games had let me down. I haven’t played the series in a while, but installed THPS2 on my laptop the other day and thought “maybe I should go buy the new one for the Wii”. Big mistake…

I’m going to blame all the “Wii sucks, it’s not as good as 360 or PS3″ arguments on this game. The game was ported for Neversoft by a company called Page 44 Studios. Sorry Page 44, but you really f**ked up and you deserve all the bad press you can get. Games ported to the Wii usually have some poorly-implemented, gimmicky way of using the Wii controllers and are usually missing features. The tragic combination of these two ideals would be bad enough if it weren’t for the completion of this terrible trifecta: THE GAME HARD-FREEZES REGULARLY. I’ve never seen this on a Nintendo console before. It’s a fault of the game code, not of the surface of the disc. This disc is pristine, taken out of the case, put into the Wii.

First, let’s start with the lesser faults. The bad implementation of the Wii controller. Part of this could be me but I never liked, nor used, the analog stick for Tony Hawk games. I liked on N64 and Gamecube how you had a choice between the two. Doing a manual (a trick where you roll on the ground on your back or front trucks with the other set in the air) is near impossible to do alone because you have to flip the analog stick forwards and backwards (up/down for a rear truck manual, down/up for a front truck manual). That is difficult enough while you’re moving, but Tony Hawk has had the ability to link tricks by doing what’s called a “revert to manual” off a half pipe to link tricks back and forth for huge multipliers. In their infinite wisdom, they made it so you have to hit the Z button, then quickly manual (up/down on the control stick, same hand). So, think about it: you’re in the air, doing 3 or 4 kick tricks, then right before you land you have to do a really awkward combination of index finger/thumb controls. Attempting this is usually rewarded by my skateboarder landing flat on his face.

To do kick tricks, you hold one button and flick your left wrist in some direction. To do grab tricks, you hold a different button and flick your wrist. While in a manual, or while grinding a rail, you flick your wrist to switch to different styles. Imagine looking at someone through their window while they’re playing this game: you’d look like you’re sitting on your couch having a seizure (well, in most cases, without the droooling). Most games (such as the port of Tiger Woods 2007) have the ability to play with the gimmicky-style controls OR to use the “classic controller” or a gamecube controller if you don’t want. This game, thanks again Page 44, does not.

They also stripped out a bunch during the “port process.” According to reviews comparing the PS3/360 version to the Wii/PS2 version, the ps3/360 version has one huge world and renders characters on the fly, while the Wii/PS2 version has separate levels and pre-rendered cut scenes for loading. I can understand that, we all know that the Wii lost the best-hardware-pissing-match by a long shot. But then they start removing random stuff like the replay editor and the skate lounge. Quite a few of the objectives in the full version throughout the game have been removed also. According to reviews, this causes a disconnect in some of the story lines. Why just randomly not port things, Page 44? Seriously?

All of this could be bearable if I could play the game. I might be able to get into the seizure-mode needed to score some points and check out the full storyline. Remember, those out there who had an NES, when, before you put the cartridge in the system, you would blow into the game to “clear the dust out”? Ever see what happened when you didn’t do that? The screen was a terrible pink color and the audio would be a high-pitched beep that didn’t stop till you turned off the system… This is exactly what my Wii did multiple times during my attempts at playing. The first time I was in the middle of watching a video, so I thought it was a coincidence or something. Wanting to play the game, I reset the system, and when that video came back up, I skipped it. Some time later into the game, it did the same exact thing during gameplay. I’ve tried a few times since then, but have always ended up having to shut the power off and losing whatever progress wasn’t saved to that point.

Needless to say, this game is on the bottom of my list. I’d rather play Wario Ware over and over than this. At least that game allows me to decide when I’m finished playing.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 9th, 2008 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Video Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.