Tony Hawk: Ride, released last November, was noticeable for several reasons. Firstly, it was the landmark tenth game in the series. Secondly, Neversoft, who had been at the helm since number one, were replaced by Robomodo. And finally, continuing Activision’s obsession with huge plastic accessories, it came with a life-sized skateboard peripheral.
Having taken a critical kicking since the arrival of EA’s Skate, this wireless controller was intended to be a return to the Hawkman’s heyday. Packed with all sorts of gadgetry, it can detect a player leaning side-to-side, lifting the nose, and twisting the board left and right. Combined with a handful of IR sensors, it’s designed to allow a player to mimic the basic motions of skateboarding which can then be translated into actual moves in game.
Making sure you’ve cleared a safe radius in your living room, place both feet on the board. To start, move a leg past either side IR sensor, as if you were pushing off on a real skateboard, and you’re rolling. Now the fun can begin: shift your weight partially onto the tail, and you’ll manual; quickly kick the tail down to Ollie; Ollie near an edge and you’ll end up in a grind. Throw in some twists, tilts and grabs over the IR sensors and you’ll get all the variety that can be found in traditional pad-based skateboarding games. The obvious difference here, however, is that the trickier tricks won’t cramp your fingers but require actual physical coordination.
Although intuitive, the change from previous iterations is huge, and sensibly players are offered a variety of skill levels to allow them to become comfortable on the board. The most basic being an on-the-rails, predetermined line, all the way through to complete freedom of movement. Happily, throw any player on the former and they’ll be tricking extremely quickly, having no need to worry about navigation.
At this level, Tony Hawk: Ride is a highly enjoyable entity. The set lines allow basic high-score modes to become more about running realistic routes than cheesing the never-ending grind, and the set challenges offered on each level make you feel as though you’re creating your own highlights reel. Furthermore, throw this board into a party situation and japes will indeed be had.
Soon, however, as the novelty fades and you settle into the meat of the game, the problems become evident, the most damning of which are the peripheral’s sensitivity levels that vary drastically. At times it took me nearly a dozen attempts to start my board rolling, though, conversely, during general trick execution the board has a habit of picking up a host of movements you swear you never made. Possibly even more heinously, it lacks consistency because of this. More advanced tricks are never assured because of slight wobbles or twitches, and you’re never quite sure why they didn’t turn out as they should.
And this is before you even try and start navigating yourself. Please don’t let me relive those moments again.
Activision were right. The Tony Hawk series did need to raise its game to compete with Skate, and I would argue that in the world of Wii, Move and Natal that the skateboard peripheral was a sensible step. Ride’s downfall is not that it is necessarily a bad peripheral, just that it has limitations that you’re forced to work up against time after time.
Whether this will alter in the forthcoming sequel is questionable, but for now there is no way of looking beyond the frailties. For all its good intentions, it’s just face planted on the half-pipe.
I make my living as a programmer at a British games developer. In my spare time I try and spread myself between writing, gaming, goalkeeping, rolling dice and keeping my hair blue. Somewhere around that my wife and rabbits fit in. Disclaimer: the views expressed are my own and do not neccessarily reflect those of my employer
