Friday, September 7, 2007

Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam




Tony Hawk’s Wii debut is totally different than expected. Instead of attempting to port Project 8 to the Wii, Activision commissioned Toys for Bob to work on a unique game for the Wii. Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam is best described as SSX on wheels. The game places a strong emphasis on speed and getting first on races, but you can still pull off some air tricks and grinds as would be expected from the Tony Hawk franchise.

The main mode in Downhill Jam is unsurprisingly Downhill Challenge. The mode has you completing tons of events across eight world locations as you unlock new outfits, characters and boards. If you’re trying to improve your playing, you can choose to record a ghost in one of the game’s sixteen slots. You can then choose to play against this ghost. Tony Hawk is the only licensed, playable skater in the game, but you can also play as a created skater or one of the many original characters. Your created skater can be greatly customized thanks to the ability to change your outfit and fully customize your board. The original characters have different attributes, strengths and weaknesses.

The basic gameplay in Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam is simple. You have to race downhill as fast as possible. It would have been a waste to throw out years’ worth of skating gameplay so Downhill Jam still includes some of that. You’ll find air tricks and grinds in the game. You need to balance pulling off tricks and maintaining a quick speed to get downhill as fast as possible. Don’t think that pulling off tricks will detract from your racing; if you don’t pull off a trick perfectly, you’ll end with a sloppy land that will slow you down but won’t cause you to bail. Pulling off moves increases your boost and special meter, which allow you to get a boost and pull off a special move, respectively. Of course, this means that levels are littered with rails, ramps, and curves to show these moves off. You’ll race in many locations including Hong Kong, San Francisco, Rio and the Hoover Dam.

You control your characters with the Wii Remote, which you hold horizontally. You steer, balance (while grinding), and rotate your character by moving the Wii Remote left or right. You can crouch (to gain speed) and jump with the 2 button. You perform grab and flip tricks by holding 2 and 1 respectively in combination with a direction in the cross pad. Grinding is done by jumping then pressing the 1 button. Of course you can get more advanced moves like double-tap flips and grabs with the buttons or flips by flicking the Wii Remote upward or downward. The controls are instantly accessible and very intuitive.

Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam supports offline multiplayer for up to four players. The game supports three gameplay modes: quick play, event series and single event. Quick play lets you choose a skater and throws you in a location and event, single event lets you choose which location and game type you want to play, and event series lets you play a type of race in multiple locations. Like in singleplayer, the different events include race, slalom, trick, steal the head and eliminirace. The game doesn’t skip a beat in multiplayer.

Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam has clean graphics. The character models look pretty good about what you would expect from the current-generation Tony Hawk games. The environments have a similar level of detail. They’re fairly colorful and stylish although the actual architecture and geometry isn’t advanced. More importantly, the game runs at a smooth 60 frames per second.

The game’s audio is pretty good, too. The soundtrack includes 40 songs. The songs include Thursday’s “At This Velocity,” Public Enemy’s “She Watch Channel Zero,” Motorhead’s “Motorhead,” and Iron Maiden’s “Different Worlds.” The sound effects are pretty good. You’ll hear every grind, kickflip, and bail in the game. In a pretty fun twist, you’ll also hear some sound effects from the speaker included in the Wii Remote. They aren’t particularly complex sounds but it’s a nice touch nonetheless.

Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is going to be a great party game. It literally takes like 30 seconds to get used to the controls in the game and it’s going to be perfect to show people what the Wii Remote can do. Although it’s not the most complex experience out there, the game is incredibly fun.

Posted by wii-play at 12:51 PM
Labels: