Tony Hawk: RIDE

6.0

Format Xbox 360

Developer Unknown

Publisher Activision

Genre Sports, Action

3 Comments

Put down your controllers and prepare for some exercise. After nearly ten years of challenging our dextrous skills, the Tony Hawk franchise has taken a sudden turn towards physical activity.

RIDE comes bundled with a motion-sensing skateboard controller. There are no wheels, but you stand on the board and tilt it in different directions to perform tricks. It's about as close to real skating as Guitar Hero is to proper fretwork. By no means totally accurate, but you still get the sensation of what it's like to be a boarder, without the painful memories of broken bones and scuffed elbows.

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The board is equipped with four light sensor panels, which detect hand and foot movements, while two accelerometers track pitch and yaw. Performing the basic tricks really couldn't be more intuitive. You tilt the front of the board upwards to jump, hold it in that position to manual (wheelie) and tilt from side to side to steer. The weighting of the controller feels so balanced that you're only at risk of falling off if you really overdo it. It's tough, too - apparently you'd have to be 21 stone to break it, and while we got a few alarming creaks at well below that, it does feel robust.

Decked Out
The biggest flaw is that the board's light sensors aren't nearly accurate enough. The idea is that you wave your hands over them to perform various grabs, but in our not-particularly-brightly-lit office it didn't pick up what we were doing unless they were practically covered up.

They're supposed to detect around knee level, but it rarely works that efficiently - you end up bent double with your hand over the sensor, looking like some knuckle-dragging horror from Left 4 Dead 2.

Mercifully, full-body movement translates from the board to the screen fairly fluidly. It's easy to do all kinds of tricks when you first begin, even if you don't fully know what you're doing.

RIDE certainly feels the most fun when it's being kept simple and you're just aiming for a high score or the fastest times.

There are three types of event to compete in - speed, trick and challenge. The first two are freestyle and you can hit the targets with any combination of tricks. Challenges present you with a set list of tricks that you have to do in order. They're demanding to the point of frustration.

It's very easy to do a tilt trick instead of a flip kick, as one always overrides the other, ruining your entire run. The challenge runs are usually kept short, which is a plus, but there's no quick way to restart.

The menu design is a complete mess. Trying to navigate the tiered menus by tilting the controller is extremely unreliable and the loading times aren't great either. Even though you're able to use a normal Xbox 360 pad, you still have to get off the board to make sure you don't accidentally select the wrong level or mode. Making a mistake is a real chore - the lengthy load times between skate parks just compounds the problem.

Low Fidelity
Considering how sharp the last Tony Hawk game looked, RIDE is a real step backward visually. The resolution seems only fractionally sharper than the Wii version and the cartoonish character models aren't really up to next-gen standards either.

The ragdoll is particularly underwhelming. It doesn't really put across the pain of crashing and burning: the characters just flop to the ground like they've fallen asleep. Robomodo should have followed the lead of EA's Skate 2 to see how bails should be done right.

Some of the collision seems off too. You can usually spot arms and legs clipping through the scenery, having no effect on the game's physics whatsoever. It's a shame that when the controller feels so realistic, so many other aspects of the game serve only to damage the illusion.

Wheels On Fire
RIDE has two things going for it. First, although it's not even being marketed as a fitness title, it's much better exercise than any other game we've played. If you can stick the first ten minutes, the endorphin buzz starts making the experience more enjoyable. It's also a great title to have around the family or at parties, because everybody wants to have a go and everybody else can laugh at them.

The casual mode is forgiving enough to support wobbling first-timers, but there's also enough of a learning curve to Hardcore mode. It's really rewarding to pull off tricks here.

On the downside is... well, almost everything aside from the control system. It's graphically poor, the menu system is fiddly and annoying and the load times are terrible.

It's also guaranteed to annoy your neighbours more than any other game you own because every time you do an olly the board smacks back down on the floor like you're banging in a nail with it. If you've got laminate floors, don't even consider it.

That the controller can't be used with anything else (yet) makes it even worse. A sequel seems almost inevitable, but £100 for a novelty-led title seems like too big a commitment. If you want to spend that much time perfecting your balance and looking silly, you can buy a real skateboard for much less.

Ben Talbot