Tony Hawk's Underground - A Worthy Return? 47
Thanks to 1UP for their review of Tony Hawk's Underground, as the extreme sports title heads into stores for its fifth iteration, and the reviewer seems to approve, mentioning that "cinematic story makes single-player fun again", as well as lauding "user-created content options", including level and animation editors, that "have massive potential." Tragically, you can only play online using the PlayStation 2 version, a major blow for Xbox Live fans, contributing to IGN's rating of the title as "a solid, if not a perfect, outing", and the conclusion: "If you're a PS2 owner, go get it. If you're anybody else, you may want to just hold that thought before diving in." Finally, GameSpot basically approve, directly countering that "most of the game's goals don't tie into the story at all", but still praising it as "another great installment."
My thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, if SSX3 hadn't come out last week, I probably would be all over this, but I can see myself spending most of my free time on that game (which is brilliant and addictive) as opposed to THUG.
Re:My thoughts (Score:2, Interesting)
As for THPS4 being too hard. THUG has a difficulty setting, so it'll actually be much easier for new players to ju
Bought it yesterday... (Score:1)
Xbox owners get no loving. (Score:3, Interesting)
Then they came out with Tony Hawk 4. At a time when every other game came with online features, Tonk Hawk 4 topped out at 2 players and no other features. Talk about lame! Additionally, despite the fact that the Xbox uses DVD9 discs, the music soundtracks are overly compressed on Tony Hawk 4, making it essentially unlistenable on a good sound setup.
THUG not having online support is just a reaffirmation that Activision doesn't care about its users. It's only supporting the Xbox because people will buy anything they put out.
Don't believe me? Read this comment [slashdot.org] that essentially says, " I think the series peaked with THPS3 -- 4 was good but it was incredibly, awfully hard, which made it just a smidgen less exciting than 3. Now this one seems like it's going to be more of the same.
Where to put the blame (Score:2)
That's because Microsoft won't let you develop online multiplayer games for Xbox unless you agree to let Microsoft own your customer data and host your online presence on Microsoft software [xboxsolution.com]. Activision and EA won't agree to that, so no online Xbox multiplayer. Don't like it? Blame Microsoft for acting like they
Tinfoil hat on (Score:3, Informative)
I'm pretty sure there is nothing philosphical going on here. This has little to do with MS. Think hard about what might motivate someone...
Re:Tinfoil hat on (Score:1)
It's not Activision that didn't put online support in THUG, it was Activistion O2, their sports games subsidiary.
Activision and Activision O2 are two wholly different entities when it comes down to final decisions. Just as EA and EA Sports, Blizzard and Blizzard North, and (to get out of the gaming world) Sony (the makers of consumer electronics like MP3 players)
Re:Tinfoil hat on (Score:2)
And since you really don't know what you are talking about, O2 was never a seperate entity, it was a brand, just like EA Big. Im sorry, your answer is incorrect, please try again later.
Re:Where to put the blame (Score:1)
I'm not sure why Activision doesn't support online play in one game and not another (though I'd imagine cash has
Personally, I prefer... (Score:3, Funny)
And so it seems do a lot of other people.
Re:Personally, I prefer... (Score:1)
"Tony Hawk is an American whizz kid skateboarding champion, whilst I am a startlingly good-looking British male model. So why the confusion?"
"Yet, each week I receive e mail from young people from all over the world congratulating me on my skateboarding prowess and asking advice on how to do various manoeuvres."
Hmm... Apparently this guy doesn't realize that Tony Hawk is over 35 years old...
\Tant
Where is my Live? (Score:2)
Actually, maybe they were throwing System Link as a bone...honestly, how many people do you know have their own copy of THUG for XBox? Or THPS4? Or hell, even THPS3 or THPS2x? Enough for a LAN party? Or do you get sidetr
Re: (Score:2)
Re::-D I'm buying (Score:2)
I'm sorry. Dislike Microsoft PC all you want or make fun of their crappy first party games and you'll hear nothing from
Re: (Score:2)
Re::-D I'm buying (Score:2)
"And guess what," PlayOnline has been around since 2002 - before Xbox Live (not by that much) but not "much longer than the Xbox."
Re::-D I'm buying (Score:2)
Re::-D I'm buying (Score:2)
I have seen it in action. Many times. I won't say I dislike it, per say, but I will say I grow bored of it rather quickly. Supposedly Crimson Skies is real good on Live, though, so I'll try and rent it next week and see.
It's heads and tails above anything the PS2 can do, and in many ways is revolutionary for what it has accomplished.
Revolutionary? Stat tracking and VOIP is revolutionary? Hardly, been done for a good long wh
Re::-D I'm buying (Score:2)
It's so easy to say when you dont have one. :(
Wha...? (Score:2)
I didn't even know he was dead.
An educated opinion... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:1)
"Activision and Neversoft have entered into an exclusive co-marketing arrangement with Sony whereby we will be cross-promoting Tony Hawk's Underground for the PlayStation 2 online through national advertising and promotional launch activities."
That's lipservice to Sony and has little or nothing to do with us, same as all adve
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:1)
I'm a game designer at Neversoft, a game studio owned but not operated by Activision, a game publisher. The decision no to support Online play for Xbox was made but us, the creators of the game. And if you'd read what I posted instead of hitting 'reply' after the first line you'd see that that the point I was making when I said not to listen to Activision was that they don't make those decisions, we do. Nowhere do I call them liars. You'
An educated opinion... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Activision is essentially telling its Xbox customers to fuck themselves"
Well, not really. As observed above, it's Microsoft's stringent Live guidelines that are preventing you from having your THUG online. Basically, we (Neversoft) refused to compromise on two points: 1. People should have to pay extra to play Tony Hawk online (players pay Microsoft for the privilege of accessing our online vault!?) and 2. Microsoft's Live 'guidelines' mandate certain things, some of which overlap with our online features. And, from a pragmatic standpoint, having our game be Live compatible means an entirely separate submission process for us, meaning the Xbox version would probably ship later than the other two.
On reviews:
The problem we're having with reviews, from my perspective, is the same across the board. THUG is larger and deeper than any console game has ever been. Now, I don't mean that as a blaring note on my own trumpet; THUG's size is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, anyone who invests in the game could probably play it for a month without running out of things to discover. The downside: effectively reviewing the game in a short time is nigh impossible. Some reviewers see the good (1up); some see the bad (Gamespot). This is not a problem particular to THUG; it's a problem with game criticism as a whole.
A single player can only ever offer his or her own experience with a particular game. As a designer you accept that, and you accept responsibility for every player's experience when playing your game. The frustrating part is that a game like THUG is that it must be designed with the assumption that people will invest a lot of time in it. This is not an unreasonable assumption considering the history of the series but it's frustrating as a designer because it means that people can't just pick up your game and have fun with it (see also: game critics). They have to be in it for the long haul.
I believe it was Jonathan Baron who observed that playing a game is like reading a novel; you invest much more time and effort than in something like a film or television program and are consequently rewarded with a richer, deeper, and more fulfilling experience (pardon my lazy paraphrasing.) That said, I also think that it's unreasonable to ask an underpaid hobbyist to spend more than a few hours with your game before giving his or her impressions of it. What I don't think is unreasonable is asking said critic to update that review at some point.
Now, I agree that playing a game is much more like reading a novel than watching a movie but I think where the analogy falls short is in the relationship between time invested and mastery, specifically in how predicable that relationship is. When you buy a novel you know that regardless of how quickly you read, reading the contents of each page means that you've finished that book. Not so with games (I'm assuming we're talking about reasonably designed games here, not the dregs.) They offer a different experience each time you sit down to play and they're self-canonizing: the more you play, the more learn about the game and the more skilled you become. The better you are at a game, the more fun it is to play. I usually avoid making generalizations but that one is universally true. You must master a game to unlock its full enjoyment potential and must therefore master it to effectively understand and critique it.
For example, I've seen quite a few reviews mention the runout/walking addition in passing, as though it really has no effect on gameplay. Forsooth! When mastered it redefines the gameplay. It's an entirely new verb. On the roadmap of Tony Hawk gameplay innovations it lies somewhere between manual and spine transfer, meaning it radically redefines the way in which you play the game. If you've only played the game for a short while this is not readily apparent, especially if you're playing the game the same way you played Ton
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:2)
As a designer, is this game fun for people with human reflexes?
I liked the other Tony Hawk games, don't get me wrong. They were fun, but frustrating. Doing more than say two tricks in the air seemed to require coordination and reflexes that nobody I knew had. And if you wanted to get anywhere in the game, you had to be able to do more than 2 tricks in a row.
I suppose I probably could have learned to do these types of tricks if I played the game for months on end, but what's the fun in that? It wa
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:1)
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:1)
Sure, but your mom can do a backside 540 shove-it and hack DOD servers. ;)
I pretty much agree... (Score:3, Interesting)
A few thoughts from a long time fan of the series, owner of the game (picked it up last night) and current frustrated customer with the Activision server that's currently tanking and breaking the "your face in the game" feature.
First, I picked it up for the ps2 but I own all 3 next-gen systems. I hear ya on your reasoning not to be Live compatible but as a gamer, I have just one response: I'm already paying for Live. If the choice is between no online play or subscribing to Live, consider myself s
Re:I pretty much agree... (Score:2, Interesting)
As far as the Live subscription goes, the concern was primarily for the users who aren't subscribed to Live but who want to play Tony Hawk online. That said, it could be argued (and I did) that anyone who'd want to play THUG online would probably already be a subscriber. So, you're not really in that demographic, being a subsc
Re:I pretty much agree... (Score:1)
The particular way we played the demo forced you to be a good trickster but also efficient in which lines you ran to hit the boxes, get S-K-A-T-E, etc. The benefit the demo had over the real game was the ability to redo that level from the beginni
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:2)
1. If you mean people are paying for Xbox Live, so what? Anyone who is playing Xbox Live-enabled games has already paid for it anyway. If you mean paying extra for access to something extra, that's easy: Just allow people to connect and play online. If we can't put our own face in the game, most of us won't consider that a crisis of epic proportions.
2. You really need to elaborate on point 2. If you're complaining about the fact that Xbox Live has an online framework in place wi
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:2)
Now THAT is a troll. :-)
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:1)
The one thing I would point out is that the core tech for those those were all more recently developed, had way longer development cycles, and in (in the case of PSO) had their online component as a major selling point.
But, as you said, you're not interested in playing THUG online anyway
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:2)
Exactly. It was my hope that by mentioning that I would make it clear that I was offering an academic argument as opposed to complaining about your game in particular (though my "lazy and uncaring" comment was over the line by that measure).
I'm simply an advocate of the idea that console games (especially beyond FPS games) should be placed online whenever possible, especially when their competitive elements are compelling. Tetris
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:1)
I don't want to have to buy a xbox.
Re:An educated opinion... (Score:2)
There were some hiccups in THPS3's networking that could affect gameplay, but many of those were ironed out for THPS4. It's probably safe to assume THUG has ironed out some of the bugs from THPS4's netcode as well (I haven't taken it online yet, going through story mode first).
Also, as
Bah (Score:1)
Above are my opinions.. (Score:1)