Tony Hawk's Proving Ground

Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground does a great job of bringing the Proving Ground experience to the Wii and PS2. The game is a port of the next-generation versions and includes many of the same environments, goals, characters, etc. You won’t find online multiplayer or the video editor here, but the new gameplay additions and Rigger Editor are in full force. For the Wii version in particular, Page 44 Studios has done a great job of molding the Tony Hawk gameplay to the Wiimote and Nunchuk.

Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground does a great job of bringing the Proving Ground experience to the Wii and PS2. The game is a port of the next-generation versions and includes many of the same environments, goals, characters, etc. You won’t find online multiplayer or the video editor here, but the new gameplay additions and Rigger Editor are in full force. For the Wii version in particular, Page 44 Studios has done a great job of molding the Tony Hawk gameplay to the Wiimote and Nunchuk.

So parents, if you told your kid no to a new console, or cannot get your hands on one of them newfangled Wii thingies, pick up Tony Hawk Proving Ground and get yourself some props.

Tony Hawk's Proving Grounds is a very good skating game and I have only started to scratch the surface here. The Wii version is very good with a few problems with the controls but the graphics and other portions of the game are really very good.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground for the Wii is a good game with classic gameplay and creative controls. The graphics fall short and there is no online component, but it is a very entertaining title on the whole. The developers struck the perfect balance between old and new content as well as familiar and inventive controls. If the graphics weren't so poor, I would give the nod to the Wii version. Unfortunately, they are bad and it does detract from the overall rating. If all you have is a Wii and you're a Tony Hawk fan, I whole heartedly endorse its purchase.

The online modes have not changed in any way at all, giving players nothing new to do online other than skate new parks. In comparison to other Tony Hawk games, Proving Ground is extremely short. I beat the game in about 5-6 hours with very little resistance at all. It feels as though the game was dumbed down to try and bring new players to the Tony Hawk franchise, but many veterans will be disappointed by how easy the game plays. Slapping a $60 is more of a slap in the face to the longstanding fans as Proving Ground seems more like an expansion of Project 8 than an entirely new game. If you enjoy the repetition, you will enjoy Proving Ground for at least a little while. However, you should really only give this title a rent or wait for it to show up in the bargain bin. Otherwise, there are a plethora of better games on the market this holiday season to spend your money on.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground does exactly what most fans of the series probably expected. It gives you a few new things you can do on and off the board -- Nail-a-Grab, Agro Kick, build stuff, flatten people -- while, once again, putting you in an environment where you have to do a bunch of things to open up a new environment where you have to do a bunch more things. It's a formula that's let the franchise survive from the PSOne to the PS3. As long as you don't expect a whole lot more out of Proving Ground, you won't be disappointed.

Now in its ninth iteration, the Tony Hawk games have ruled the world of videogame skateboarding. Until EA came along with skate., which leaves Proving Ground feeling a little tired and old-fashioned.

Now in its ninth iteration, the Tony Hawk games have ruled the world of videogame skateboarding. Until EA came along with skate., which leaves Proving Ground feeling a little tired and old-fashioned.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground does a surprisingly good job of bringing the Hawk experience to the Wii. There is a learning curve to the controls and some may not feel as natural or as intuitive as you'd like, but given the limitations of the system, it's far from the nightmare it could have been. The game itself will come as no surprise to anyone who's been playing with Tony for any amount of time. While it does improve over its predecessor in a number of ways, the improvements are the same sorts of baby steps that we've come to expect from the series. As long as you don't expect a whole lot more out of Proving Ground, you won't be disappointed.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is a relatively solid game, but it really doesn't do anything new and significant. We've seen all of the good parts from the game multiple, multiple times now, and it really just feels like we're playing a large expansion pack. That doesn't mean that it's not fun, but it does mean that it's rather old hat.

Now that the main games in the series have moved on to a larger and somewhat more realistic style of level design, it's hard to go back and break it down into chunks again for these lesser versions. Some chunks don't have anything interesting to skate on, and it's a pain to move around the city and go back to accomplish different goals, especially when those goals aren't very good to begin with. The Tony Hawk series has seen better days on all platforms, but the PS2 and Wii releases are especially shabby this year.

Now that the main games in the series have moved on to a larger and somewhat more realistic style of level design, it's hard to go back and break it down into chunks again for these lesser versions. Some chunks don't have anything interesting to skate on, and it's a pain to move around the city and go back to accomplish different goals, especially when those goals aren't very good to begin with. The Tony Hawk series has seen better days on all platforms, but the PS2 and Wii releases are especially shabby this year.

Sadly this is by far the weakest of the Wii Tony Hawk games so far, mainly thanks to it being so inferior when compared to its counterparts and tries its best to force unwieldy motion controls into its signature moves, failing quite miserably and leading to the whole gameplay element being severely tarnished as a result. Unfortunately there are no particular features that help to redeem the game either, leaving this as a hollow shell and a pretender to the Tony Hawk's franchise.

The basic setup for Tony Hawk's Proving Ground has been seen and done before, but it still had the promise to be a decent title. Unfortunately, extremely shoddy controls mean that you'll likely be throwing your Wii Remote and Nunchuck around the room and ejecting the disc before you even come close to getting your money's worth.