The Tony Hawk franchise has dominated skateboarding games since 1999 due to lack of competition. Activision has produced 10 games since then and the 11th coming this fall. It’s called Proving Ground, set in the East Coast in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. and will be available on all platforms. Neversoft decides to stick with the original gameplay through the whole franchise which is a great thing (if you are into the whole button mashing thing.)

EA Black Box buds in on the market and is currently developing Skate. A more realistic skateboarding game that is set in San Vanelona (San Fransisco, Vancouver, Barcelona.) The best spots in these 3 cities are put into one for the player to thrash. This game will release September 11th for 360 owners and September 24th in North America for PS3 and October 5th in Europe also for PS3.

Debating on which game to buy? Hit the jump and see how the two battle it out and which we think is the better game.

Controls

The controls in Tony Hawk remain the same. Up on the Left Stick to push, A to ollie, X for Flip tricks, B for Grabs, and Y to grind. Very bland when you compare it to Skate’s controls.

The controls in Skate are much more simple. To push you press either X for your left foot or A for your right depending on how you want to push (regular/ mongo), this also affects the camera angle as when you press A the skater goes off to the right of the screen and X for the left. Black Box has made a terrific control scheme called “Flick It.” To ollie you bring the right stick down and once the skater is in position you flick it up and he will ollie. To do tricks it’s the same thing but you move the right stick to the right, left, diagonal etc… and every different way you “flick it” are mapped to do different tricks. I really liked how the controls flowed so well in the Skate demo, definatley an improvement from the buttons.

Graphics

Tony Hawk Proving Ground

Skate.

It is very hard to tell which game has the better graphics but it’s looking like PG is going to take this one. PG’s environments look very realistic and sharp. The characters in both games look very realistic but theres a noticeable difference between the two and PG’s are more detailed.

Story Line

Skate starts with a clean slate, creating how you want to be and adding a back story as well. After that its all about what you want to do. Adding another realistic element to the game, the story is about getting big in the skateboarding industry. To do that you have to get footage, do challenges, do contests, pick your sponsors and work your way up the chain. Once you get some sponsors you will need to get on the cover of Thrasher and/or The Skateboard Mag which are 2 of the biggest skateboarding magazines out there. Once you do that your set for your skateboarding career.

The story in PG is all about choosing what kind of skater you want to be and how to be good at it. You can choose to be a Hardcore, Career, or Rigger skater. Each path you take will unlock different stories and modes. By choosing one of those classes you can earn upgrades to get things that have to do with the mode you picked.

If you choose to go on the path of a Rigger you can unlock the Rigger Menu, Climbing, and Mod tool. Each of these have 3 points to unlock so you can pick which one you want to be better at. If you choose to be a Career skater you can unlock and get better at Nail the Trick, Nail the Manual, and Nail the Grab. If you go with Hardcore you can unlock Skate Checking, Aggro Kick, and Bowl Skating. All in all, this story is about choosing the path you want to go on and earning points to get better at it.

From what we heard about PG’s storyline it doesn’t seem much different than any other of the Tony Hawk games. Skate’s story is actually a lot like Tony Hawk’s Underground 1 which is the best Tony Hawk game out there in my opinion. Which makes Skate’s story great to me.

Video Editor

In Skate the video editor is called Skate.Reel here what it can do. At any time you can access the skate.reel and play the last 30 seconds of skating that you have done. With this you can edit the visual effects such as greyscale, sepia, negative, 80’s, video, experimental and copper. You can also Edit camera angles limited to 5 which are adjusted around the skater.

Trim clips by moving the left/right stick over and whatever footage is in the middle of the two will be the finishing clip. You can also slow down or speed up the clips in variables of 25%. Markers are available to sort of break the clip and change the camera angle in the same clip or to add different effects and such. After you’ve done that you can then upload it to www.skate.ea.com from your xbox and click on skate.reel. You will then be able to view and share your clip with people worldwide.

Now, looking at PG’s editor. Just like in Skate, at any time you can start recording footage. Once you have enough you can go to the editor and put your video together. This editor is actually a lot like Windows Movie Maker as you can shorten/ lengthen clips, put different clips together etc.. You can change the camera angle in the middle of the clip, slow down or speed up any clip. In each clip you can adjust the camera.

The camera’s in Proving Ground are much more advanced. Set up tripod cams, lock the camera to the left/right side of the skater, lock the camera to the board, view through a static camera, have helicopter cameras, or even record your camera movements in real time along with the clip; panning, zooming, following the skater just like you were on a skateboard behind him and get these movements embedded into the clip all just to get the perfect camera angle.

On top of all of that there are video effects and each clip is allowed 3 effects. The effects include the fish eye lens, monochrome, noise, different contrast settings, different color filters, blur, depth field and a whole bunch more of over the top effects. You can adjust the effect’s strength, whether or not the effect fades in/out or not, fades in/out to black or white.

Even on all of that, there is more… There are video overlays that add in different effects/images to the edited clip like film grain, things that distress the image, as well as borders, and even your sponsor’s logos.

Every skate video is put together with music, there are about 60 tracks in PG. You can pick any song from the play list and pick which part of the song you want it to start at to match with the skater. Neversoft used some of their Guitar Hero 3 technology and put it in this editor. They beat tracked every song in the game, when your skater ollies to the very beginning of a bass line it will give you more points for style.

Yeah, uploading 30 second clips to the internet is a great feature but Proving Ground’s editor blows Skate’s to another dimension. All the camera angles and effects are a great add on and selling point in Proving Ground.

Multiplayer

Not much has been said about the multiplayer in either of the games but i’ll base it off of what we know so far.

The MP in Skate can just be riding around sessioning spots with your friends, making videos, or playing the game of S-K-A-T-E the real way. To play S-K-A-T-E the real way, the first person sets a trick and the second person has to copy the trick. Instead of having the trick be button combos it’s like real skating where you have to master the trick on the joysticks and if you do the wrong trick or don’t land anything, you get a letter. In Skate you can enter MP right from the SP and make a lobby and invite your friends. There is also racing in skate where you go down hills, dodging cars, doing huge gaps and being the first one across the finish line. I’m sure there will be many other modes online but i have not heard of any yet.

In PG you can also join the MP from the SP and there’s also your personal Skate Lounge that you create and can invite your friends to. All thats been said is that we can expect the same modes that were in the previous games.

At least Skate had originality Well at in the MP by having the real game of S-K-A-T-E put in the game and races and didn’t adding barley anything new from the previous game.

Features

The main features in Skate are the new innovative controls and just how realistic the game will be compared to PG. This will be a hit for anyone who owns a 360/PS3 and a skateboard. The Skate.Reel is a big feature in the game although it is not better than PG’s you will still need it to beat the game. There is also a photo mode where you can take pictures while skating or in replays and upload them to the web.

A big thing in Skate is the X-Games, they haven’t been able to do it in Tony Hawk games but now here it comes rolling in due to a 15 year contract EA signed in 05′ to put ESPN in they’re games.

Again the main feature is definatley the video editor that is very expansive. Choosing the way you skate and how you want to progress in the game is a big feature and hasn’t been done in any skateboarding game with the whole “classes” thing.

A very big feature that hasn’t been said yet is the park editor. You get this by being a Rigger and can edit almost anything in the game to be skateable with over 100 objects. There is also Nail the Trick, which was in the previous Tony Hawk title but they have expanded it to Nail the Manual and Nail the Grab as well.

Tony will take this one as he has more and better features.

Gameplay

This one is for you to decide, we can not tell you what kind of gameplay to like, and both of these are very different games (kind of.) I know that almost every skateboarder (like myself) will enjoy the way Skate plays instead of PG. I have only heard good things from other skateboarding gamers about this Skate and how much it’s going to kick PG’s ass. The way this game plays is very casual compared to PG or any of the Tony Hawk games.

The controls are completely different making it so you can’t string together 250 tricks to get a 10 million point combo. In this game you will want to find good spots to skate that aren’t being guarded by security and do an insane trick on it, capture it on video then edit it and get it on the internet to share with all. This game is all about getting better and progressing at being a better skater and getting to the top.

Proving Ground on the other hand can be very intense. Some of the goals you will need to restart several times to get that 500,000 point combo to knock a sign down onto your rivals. If you like not having to do a ton of work to do tricks then this is your game. This game’s about finding what kind of skater you want to be, how to be it, and be good at it. The controls are very simple and there is barley any learning curve, you pick it up and will know how to play in minutes.

Overall

The game i will be buying this year is Skate. I really like it for the realism they implemented into this skateboarding title. I’ve wanted this kind of game ever since i played Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1. Tony Hawk games have always played the same way and this is exactly what i needed. This will be something new to the skateboarding game industry.The thing that the video editor in PG doesn’t have is getting it online which is a very big deal to me. I want people to see how good i am, what spots are good and which tricks I’ve done over them. That is much better to me than more camera angles and some lenses.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 30th, 2007 at 1:20 am and is filed under Xbox 360. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.