Far much better than P8, but could be better
THE GOOD: Improved Nail-The Trick, Decent Graphics, Better create-a-skater, Good music (as in all TH games), Stable frame-rate, Cool intro. THE BAD: A lot of glitches, No nail-the manual, No Skate Lounge, No online play, Short story mode, Short skater videos, No Free Skate, Dissapointing 2 player mode, Oh, I already say this game is too short?
The first weird feel about this game is the main menu. If you think than the Project 8 menu was short (with only Career, 2 Player, Free skate and Options) you will be more dissapointed. This game only have Story Mode, 2 player and Options. Well, other bad thing is in Story Mode there is no story at all. At the beginning, yeah, a lots of cutscenes, but when you move to the second level, you only need to complete goals and goals and keep advancing.
The beginning of the Story is the more enjoyable. There are 3 cool goals with cool cutscenes. In the hardcore goal Mike V teach you Aggro Kick, a special kick that help you to get high speeds. In the rigger goal, you need to make a video to send to Jeff King's Show with your buddy Rube. You need to place some kickers in front of abandoned cars and trick over them. And the career goal is about meeting Arto Saari, and he will teach you Nail-the-Trick. Complete all the goals and Tony Hawk will teach you the basics of the game, that involves some "Street Challenges". Complete that and you will unlock another area, and then the game become a little bored.
This game have improved NTT, so now the boards rotates better and the feet animation is improved, and now you can rotate your body. However, Nail the Grab is a little ugly in animation, but still is decent, and Nail the Manual isn't here.
There is a lot of thing than can be improved in this game. The legth of the game is one of those. This game could have much more goals and secret stuff. And the Skate Lounge could be stored here too, but you can't find it anywhere. In conclusion, Neversoft should take much more attention on the ps2/Wii version of this game, or just stop doing bad Tony Hawk games for this consoles anymore. It could be a great idea make TH games for the new generation consoles and other diferent TH games in the older ones independently. In this i mean, make Proving Ground and whatever other new TH game will be released only on the consoles that support that game, and apart, make other TH specially made for the older consoles. (what about THUG 3???). Cheers!