Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
All board the Wii bandwagon
It's skateboarding, but not quite as you know it. And it's Tony Hawk too, but never as you've seen him - at least in the virtual world. Deviating from every Tony Hawk game yet released, Downhill Jam ditches the heavy focus on tricks and missions in favour of a series of races to the finish across some of the world's steepest locations. It's the first Tony Hawk game for the Wii and it's obvious that Activision were keen to implement the console's unique control scheme...
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...Although this isn't best exemplified by first forcing you to navigate the game's menu's using the D-Pad, but after a few button presses you're strapped up and ready to go. To control Tony or any of the other (not famously recognisable sports persons), you hold the Wii remote horizontally and tilt it to the left and right to steer. Pressing and releasing 2 performs an ollie, holding 1 executes grinds and a combination of the two and nimble finger work on the D-Pad is the secret to performing spins, flips and generally being a bit of a show off. Directing Tony and his buddies is, at least at first, a confusing business. Using the Wii remote on its side to mimic the steering wheel of a car makes sense, but using the same method to lead a skateboarder downhill feels, at least initially, detaching instead of more immersing.
Downhill Jam's single player mode is split into a mixture of challenges from straight racing to slalom, earning points through tricks and others in which prowess is measured by the number of people you can floor with a sudden thwack on your way down the hillside. Gold, silver and bronze medals are awarded to the quickest, most agile and violent of competitors. These can then be exchanged for progression points that, once you've gained the required amount, will unlock new races, boards, costumes and artwork. That's as complicated as the playing structure gets, but a varied and imaginative level design means that you'll want to return to try and win gold all the way through.
As is the tradition in Tony Hawk titles, the world is your playground. If a surface is raised and has an edge, chances are you can grind on it. Leaping sporadically onto a wall or high into the air to a power cable is often the best way to discover cheeky shortcuts in order to outwit your rivals. There are shortcuts aplenty throughout every level, from leaping over a barrier to cut out a hairpin bend in San Francisco to hopping a ride on the roofs of the congested Hong Kong traffic. The only other way to increase your speed is to fill a meter on the side of the screen by performing tricks as you ride. Its maximum capacity is indicated by a skull bursting into flames, at which point a quick shake of the Wii remote will unleash a mighty burst of speed, perfect for nipping ahead a few places in wide open areas, but disastrous in the narrow winding streets of Scotland, for instance. Sometimes just an erratic turning action can cause you to accelerate wildly at the most inappropriate of times, sending you face first into a nasty static object like a big truck or a wall - downhill skateboarding isn't a sport for the vane.
The frequency with which you find yourself crashing is perhaps the biggest criticism that one can bestow upon Downhill Jam. Some locations are so densely populated that collisions with both moving and inanimate objects become unavoidable. If you're lucky it'll only happen once in a race, not impeding your progress too much. Other times it will occur several times in a row, leaving you in a helpless mess as your competitors scoot past with ease. These said accidents, on many occasions are no one's fault but your own. However, when the controller's responsiveness fails in the approach to a particularly sharp bend, you can't help but feel cheated. In a game that really has the capacity to excite at the times which you rattle through courses, flawlessly leaping from edge to edge, it stings like gravel embedded deep in your knee caps when certain runs end with one disastrous smash after another, ruining the game's speedy continuity and shattering your ego, inflated moments ago after a gold medal-winning performance.
Anyone amazed by the eye-popping graphics in the Xbox 360's recent Tony Hawk Project 8 is likely to feel let down by Downhill Jam's offerings. That's not to say that the Wii's lesser power fails to deliver a satisfying visual experience, mind you. The mix of racing plains is as clichéd as they come, but every inch is filled with interactive goodness, successfully making you feel part of the action. Hundreds of pedestrians mill about, boxes, carts and stands are completely destructible, as too are barriers into residential dwellings and secret routes. The sense of speed is also palpable from the moment you drop off the ramp at each event's beginning, with barely a hint of slowdown and only a tiny smattering of pop-up despite the busyness of the environments.
As always, the extreme sports action is complimented by a playlist populated mostly by alternative rock, punk and emo bands. The Bouncing Souls, The Loved Ones and The Bronx are just a few of the artists with 'The' as a prefix to their name that feature. The adrenaline-layered tones of these bands undeniably suit the game, but are obviously not to everyone's taste. It seems Activision have really missed a trick by failing to implement the option of custom soundtracks a la Excite Truck, but at least the game allows you to pick and choose which of the available tracks you want to play. Sadly the same isn't true for some of the most badly scripted interviews with Tony and the other skateboarders before each race. They're a typecast mix of popular subcultures (the Goth, blonde bimbo, reformed geek, etc.) and they're all awful. MacKenzie, the 'tough cockney chick' that 'likes to fight' and dresses in a Union Jack top sounds more like someone from the cast of Mary Poppins than an Eastender.
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is a game likely to upset the series' purists, since it lacks the bewildering array of button presses needed in order to pull off tricks (not to mention the horrible omission of the manual trick, essential in previous offerings to rack up mega combo points). However, it demonstrates a welcome change of direction for the now infamous series and definite inroads into future potential for the future of similar racers on Wii. No, it's not without its faults (the less said about the unfulfilling multiplayer, the better), but viewed as a shamelessly simple arcade racer, it offers a surprising amount of longevity and fun.
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