N-Philes

Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam

Posted January 9th 2007 by Curtis Brunet.

During high school, one game always seemed to capture the interest of my circle of friends. That game, a PlayStation game, was Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. I easily out-skated these casual gamers to the point of being able to best them on a regular basis, and with the launch of the GameCube, I quickly added the first Tony Hawk title, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, to my collection. As the years passed, my collection of titles in the series grew to include THPS 4, Underground, and most recently, American Wasteland. When Project 8 went into development (the eighth iteration in the series, clever, no?), another offshoot of the series, meant to pull in more flow for Activision, was visualized. Being developed exclusively for Wii, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam attempts to bring something new to the table,

Downhill Jam isn't your standard Tony Hawk title, as it tries desperately to derive itself from the current progression of the Tony Hawk series. The title plays like a racing game with skateboarding elements mixed in as opposed to a skateboarding game with racing elements. Harking back to Tony Hawk's grass-roots style of flying straight down a hill in certain amount of time, Downhill Jam is all about speed, tricks, and destruction. Starting the game, players choose from one of several different selectable characters. Each character has been carefully created and each has their own style, be it Crash's hippie mellow down to earth tune, MacKenzie's tomboyish aggressive tone, or Ammon's eloquent competitiveness, every gamer should be able to find that certain someone they can relate to. As opposed to previous Tony Hawk titles, only 2 characters are based on actual skaters; Tony Hawk and Kevin Staab. Downhill Jam also features an intricate Create-A-Skater mode for those gamers who prefer to play as themselves, or, as anyone else their mind can come up with. The single player mode features a slew of ranks to progress through, each rank holding multiple levels to collect points in. These points are integral to the game, as they are needed to unlock the ensuing rank. Meeting predetermined requirements by the end of the stage scores the player a bronze, silver, or gold finish.

The title features eight main locations to play in, each with separate parts to the locale (e.g. start, middle, and finish). Locales are separated in multiple different ways which is shown in the stage select screen. These can be separated in multiple ways such as just the starting, middle or finish section, start to middle, middle to finish, and even start to finish (plus many iterations in between). These separations are usually dependant on the mode of play. There are 5 main modes players will find themselves in; racing, slalom, trick-attack, destruction and pedestrian knockdown, each with a bronze, silver, and gold as a possible finish. Racing is your standard "be the first across the finish line" style. You are pitted against several other racers, and must use shortcuts and devastating attacks to make sure you are the first one across the finish line. Racing is also mixed up with an elimination mode, wherein every few seconds, the player in last place is eliminated from the race. Slalom is one of the tougher modes of play, forcing players through gates down the stage, extending their time through the stage until they reach the end. Though it is technically harder, it gives you the best idea for the quickest way down the different courses, as there are many hidden passages to utilize to your advantage. Trick-attack is one of the more classic modes of play. At the beginning of the stage, the player is given a predetermined amount of points to score while tricking, and they must then achieve that before hitting the finish line. To aid them along in this, the developers saw fit to include certain slalom style gates that slow down time until the player hits the ground. This gives them ample opportunity to bust out the craziest specials and combos possible for massive point productions. Destruction is a race down the stage in classic Burnout style, trying to inflict as much destruction to the environments as possible before the time runs out, be it knocking over boxes, street carts, power lines, you name it. If it can be destroyed, you will get points for it. Rounding out the modes is possibly the weakest of them is the pedestrian knockdown mode. Players race through the different stages with a predetermined amount of "smacks" that they must dish out to the many pedestrians located throughout the stages. Don't let the jollity of the mode name fool you, it feels more like a thrown together battle mode to extend the usefulness of attacking other competitors in normal races, as opposed to a full mode you will continuously play. You will cringe every time you see a stage pre-selected with this mode.

The most important question on everyone's mind however is not really the modes, the graphics, the sound, or the depth; it's how well does it play with the Wiimote? Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is played with the Wiimote held in the "NES position" (turned on its side). Tilting the Wiimote from side to side controls the turning and spin of the on-screen character, while the 1 and 2 buttons control your ollies, flips, grinds and grabs. Scoring consecutive combo's or knocking down other players or pedestrians will power your boost meter, and shaking the controller in an up and down fashion or pressing the B trigger will give the player a nitro-like boost. The A button controls your in the air special moves. Pressing the A button alone, or the A and 1 or 2 button in conjunction with one another will perform different aerial acrobatic maneuvers to score you massive points. Gone from the standard control scheme of previous Tony Hawk titles are manuals, reverts, and flatland tricks, in their place, combat. The D-Pad itself is used for multiple different things depending on the situation. In the air, the D-Pad controls which type of grab or flip trick the character will perform, while on the ground, pressing either right or left on the D-Pad will force the playable character to punch or kick in that direction, causing damage, knocking down pedestrians, or injuring other players. The only time the D-Pad is used to control the character directly is when the player is grinding; holding a direction as you jump out of the grind will cause the character to exit the grind in that general direction, in most cases towards another grind to continue the combination. While this control scheme works, and works very well, the time it takes to learn to control the playable characters may be too much for certain gamers to bear. Veterans of the series may find the most hardship in the title, continuously wiping out in a vain attempt to use the D-Pad to control the character, and forgetting to keep both hands at an even level. The learning curve on the title is very steep, which will not only turn off many gamers, but will also turn off other random gamers who might have picked up the multiplayer to give it a spin. Nintendo promised us a pick up and play model to the Wii, and unfortunately, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam delivers just the opposite. Gamers will need to spend a lot of time with the control scheme to get used to it, though once they do, it is a great title to play with.

Besides some nice CGI interview style videos of the characters before each stage, with characters ribbing each other or giving insight into their psyche, the visuals of the game are sub-standard, even by GameCube standards. Character models look slapped together, and movement looks stiff. Although the stages give good sense of size, with decent environmental effects, the levels themselves, with the obstacles, buildings and pedestrians look blocky and stiff. The art in the game is fantastic, but when translated into gameplay, it really shows off what Wii games may unfortunately be destined to look like, and that is a PS2 title. The Wii is supposed to be a supped GameCube, and really, this title doesn't represent that. We know that the GameCube was capable of fantastic visuals, Capcom showed it with Resident Evil 4, so why is it that after six years of working with the hardware, developers can't pump out equivalent visuals? Fortunately, the sound in the game does not falter like its graphical brethren. With a huge selection of great hard rock and metal to slide down the track to, you will forget the need for your own playlist, though the inclusion of playing tracks from an SD card would have been nice. The only real downfall with the the game's music is that you are not shown which track is currently playing, and when cycling through the available songs in the tracklist, you are not given the opportunity to listen to the track, so you can never really associate the name and song together. Quite a few times there would be a great track by an artist I didn't recognize, and I was forced to spend an hour or so searching online to find who it was. A quick "EA Trax" style popup when a track begins could have really pleased some people.

The real question on the title is whether or not gamers will give it the time it needs to learn its fundamentals. Once there, they will find loads of depth and tons of things to do in the Birdman's downhill offering. The multiplayer mode can give gamers a fun filled gaming session. Players can select the mode and stage, or set it so that it runs through different stages multiple times. The same unlockable characters and boards are all available. Speaking of unlockables, the game features tons of stuff to unlock and look at. Everything from initial level art from each individual stage, videos of Tony Hawk and company downhill skating, and even an in studio video of Iron Maiden performing Different World. Add in the huge selection of boards to collect and unlock, throw in a few extra characters along with costumes for each and you can spend hours just trying to collect it all. Finished the game and collected everything? Scored gold in every stage? What about Jewels and Super Jewels? Though it never actually tells you that you received them, scoring high in each stage plus a gold medal can reward you different jewels (shown in the crown on the level select screen). Finishing every stage with Super Jewel will be a treat to complete, and that is not even mentioning the developer created ghost files available to race against.

Steady Beat - Pump up the jam!

Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is a great game. It is a great sidequest of the main series, and it brings enough new mechanics to the series to justify its existence. However, gamers need to spend far too long with the title to get used to it, which negates Nintendo's stance that the Wii is a pick up and play platform. Sure, anyone can play Wii Sports right away, but that's after years of knowing HOW to swing a bat. This will take some getting used to, but once you do, you can spend hours with the title. With tons to unlock, incredible level design, a great playlist and some excellent downhill skating action, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is a solid title for those gamers willing to put the time into it. The Birdman cometh to Wii, and we salute him.

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