Tony Hawk Ride Hands-on Preview

Talk to any person who’s ever played a video game, and chances are they’ve played at least one in the Tony Hawk series. As a brand it’s massive, with a whopping nine official releases and a handful of additional spin-offs. Activision and Robomodo recently showed off their latest development: Tony Hawk: RIDE, the game which boldly rips the tried and tested controller out of players’ hands and throws them onto a very real board instead. Now, I’m no pro skater myself, (I did the odd kickflip a few years back) but I was keen to jump on and give it a go.

Tony Hawk games have received mixed opinions of late. While Project 8 was thought to be pretty great, Proving Grounds was seen somewhat in a lesser light. More importantly, the Tony Hawk games have been growing at a slow and steady pace, never really throwing anything widely new into the mix. Thankfully, Activision, Robomodo and the Hawk himself got together and decided it was time this genre got its own peripheral (well, if you can overlook SEGA’s coin-op arcade Top Skater). Quite simply, the board is designed to do everything. Although the standard controls can still be found cunningly hidden on the side to negotiate menus, in-game the board will do almost all of the work. Visually it looks the part, with a neat wing pattern on the surface and being as close to the same size and shape of a real board as possible. We’re promised that the final look of the board will have more of a grip tape-like finish to it than the relatively smooth demo boards.

Robomodo has been careful to make sure the board responds as accurately as possible to real life skating movements; two accelerometers inside it are used to detect the three axis of movement; flat rotation, rocking forward and back, and tilting side to side. On top of this, four infra red sensors adorn the front, back and sides for detecting grabs and pushing the board off. I’d wondered how you actually get the board moving until I saw Robomodo President Joshua Tsui simply brush his foot past the board, exactly as you would on a real one.

Right, time for me to have a go. Like me, you might find yourself feeling a bit stupid pretending to push yourself along on a carpeted floor, but once you’re moving it all comes pretty naturally. Initially you stand sideways with your back foot on the rear lip of the board, while the other sits nearer the middle. The board rocked quite comfortably under my feet on the soft carpet (note: carpet not provided) and at first my character responded well. “Try and pull a manual for about fifty feet” Tsui mentions to me. Not a problem, I shifted my weight back a bit and lifted the front of the board gently into the air. Unlike previous Hawks where balance was a non-contextual controller affair, RIDE responds directly to your board’s position; i.e. if your balance is good, so is your character’s. Mine, it turns out, isn’t as good as I thought, with a feeble thirty feet being all I could manage before I lost my balance.

The next task was a flip trick over a bridge. What used to be a simple button press for jump is now a sharp jab on the back of the board – same as a manual, just faster. The same can be said for the trick itself, with rocking and tilting influencing the type of flip trick chosen. Sadly I failed to pull one off, but I had a chance to redeem myself with grinding. There’s no fancy move to be done to grind, just ollie the board onto the rail. Dead simple. Bam, landed it first time, while Josh Tsui himself had overcooked it. Again you can adjust the grind based on your movement of the board; while landing straight on will pull off a 50-50, rotating the board 90 degrees will get you into a boardslide. In that regard, it works exactly like you’d expect. Given the limitations of gestures you can accurately, or even feasibly pull off on a board, special moves like the 900 and darkslides will be offered in place of a standard move at certain points in each level.

Tony Hawk: RIDE has also done away with the open world scenario, where players could cruise around on their boards looking for places to trick along the way. Instead, going back to a slightly more traditional Tony Hawk style, you’ll be set specific challenges in a reasonably confined area. It’s all well and good looking for trick spots holding down one button while sat on a comfortable sofa. It’s an entirely different affair pushing along and balancing on a board for 15 minutes to get a few kick flips off a particularly high curb.

“It’s all about the gameplay coming to you, you know exactly what you need to do when you get into any of the game modes…It’s very similar to actual skating; you find a spot and you just trick the heck out of it over and over again,” says Tsui.

To demonstrate, Tsui switched us over to vert mode – a trick style challenge that sees you negotiating a very large half pipe in order to get massive air and perform some of the more spectacular tricks. Turning the board side on, you get a better feel for the back and forth motion of the half pipe, with stalls, grinds, grabs and flip tricks all done through your body’s movement. Rock the board backwards over the coping rail to stall, or approach at an angle to grind along it, pop the board at the top for a jump and then throw your hands down over one of the four sensors to perform a grab. One thing I couldn’t fail to notice was just how much space you occupy while throwing your weight around like this, and somewhat unsurprisingly, it’s the reason that local multiplayer is based around hot seat gameplay and just the one board.

One thing is for sure: if you are even remotely fond of skating games, or perhaps used to be but have since lost faith, then keep your eyes open for news on RIDE. Much like Guitar Hero, this game has the potential to be a real party piece and the design suggests it’s catering for just that scenario. Were you one of those guys who, like me, owned a skateboard but never really used it properly? Yup, this could be for you.

Tony Hawk: RIDE is due out for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii this autumn.