Tony Hawks Pro Skater: The Decline of a Heavyweight Franchise
While thats an admittedly brash title for an article its with good reason I make such a bold statement, for it is sadly, what seems like, the final time we’ll see a console Hawks. Where the late Kurt Cobain vowed to burn out before his cardigan-bearing soul faded away Neversoft’s franchise has adopted an opposite mantra; its open flame flickering and its candle melted mere millimetres from the base.
It’s bee, what feels like, the entirety of the THPS legacy that we’ve all been playing the same game; developers may lead you to believe that certain innovations have been implemented which change the way we’ve played each title from one year to the next, but how much exactly can a feature truly shape the game to be called an innovation? Somewhere along this path the ability to carry your board became a so-called innovation, as too did the ability to slow-down time and execute an elaborate string of board flips; an innovation that used up around 3% of the overall gameplay experience… You call that an evolution, Neversoft? I call it a waste of time. You can package your chocolate fireguard in the finest, most punk-rockingest colours and lettering all you wish, but when I open the box I’ve still got that same, pointless chocolate fireguard.
Developers create these pseudo-features to bide themselves some time as they rattle their brains for some genuine ingenuity to implement on the next edition of the franchise. But what happens when, from one year to the next, that ingenuity fails to show? They’re substituted for stop gaps; flimsy, thrift store-super glue that struggles to bond a lackluster product.
So I understand this year’s Tony Hawk’s effort, Proving Ground, rests its reputation on the ability for a player to choose his or her path; be that a professional, a risk-taker, or whatever skating cliche they can throw your way. You’ll have to excuse me for going out on a whim here, but whatever path you do so choose you can bet both butt-cheeks you’ll be playing the very same game you were playing this time last year.
Tao wrote:
I totally agree.
The Tony Hawk franchise is dead.
Unless Neversoft can pull something unique out of the bag for the next installment (Tony Hawks Final Farewell) then I am sure they cannot do much to save themselves in the face of more “serious” games like EA’s Skate.
The gameplay in the Hawk series is the kind of skating I used to dream about when I first started skating over 20 years ago. The massive ollies to wall rides to manuals to backflips still feel appealing, but the pull of a realistic skating experience is much better.
The different character types seems to be an odd inclusion to the game. Why not just have one type of skater and then decide how you want to skate (although you can change part-way through apparently).
Long live EA Skate IMHO…..
Posted 16 Oct 2007 at 3:24 pm ¶