Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
Posted March 8, 2007
It's a given anymore that every new console launch is going to be accompanied by something with "Tony Hawk" in the title, but while Project 8 was making the rounds on every other platform in sight, Activision opted to take a different approach for the Wii. Instead of focusing on acrobatic tricks and precision combos, this Toys for Bob-developed spin-off places its emphasis squarely on speed.
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, as you could probably guess from the title, sees the legendary skater and a small army of cartoony caricatures careening downhill, racing against each other or the clock in eight sprawling international locales. Despite some quippy interviews with the skaters before each event, there's not much more to the storyline than "race" and "win", so I'll dive headfirst into the gameplay.
The game tosses the nunchuck aside and is played with just the Wiimote, which is held lengthwise like an old-school NES controller. Your skater is pretty much always plunging downhill by default, nudged left or right by tilting the controller to either side. The '1' and '2' buttons cover most everything else: ollies, grinds, grab tricks, wallrides, sticker slaps, and flip tricks. A press of the D-pad helps determine which trick you're pulling off, and it can also be used to knock competing skaters off-balance or pummel passing-by pedestrians. Rack up enough tricks and your "Zone Bone" meter is gradually filled, and the quick bursts of speed it unleashes are essential to coming out on top of the more grueling races later in the game. Using the 'A' button to pull off power slides gives players a similar edge.
Even with the remote tilting and Downhill Jam relying on just a couple of buttons that are each pulling double or triple duty, the control scheme is remarkably intuitive. The learning curve flattens out entirely after wading through the opening tutorials for a few minutes, and I found the controls tight, responsive, and almost immediately accessible. Even after sinking more than fourteen hours into the game, I could never blame the controls for losing a race.
Although Toys for Bob has packed on a healthy assortment of tricks -- pretty much all of the Tony Hawk standards minus reverts and manuals -- there's no real point in memorizing all of the button combinations. Downhill Jam never requires players to pull off a specific trick the way the other games in the series have, and with as tough as it is to bail off your board, frenzied button mashing is all it takes to tally up a few hundred thousand points. Considering the series' long-standing emphasis on nailing complicated tricks, this greatly simplified approach in Downhill Jam may be a turnoff to longtime fans of the franchise, but I thought the feverish button mashing was a perfect fit with the frenetic pace of the game.
The usual battalion of licensed skaters has been tossed aside. Tony Hawk is on the roster, naturally, alongside such colorful and newly-created characters as prissy celebutante Tiffany, monotone goth chick Jynx, and faux-Rastafarian Budd. A create-a-skater feature is also included if you want to roll your own, but it's not nearly as robust as previous installments in the series. Each character has his or her own skill set with varying balances of speed, turning, combat, and the like, starting off with just one low-end deck. The more races you win, the more you unlock, including additional skaters, new outfits, and more capable boards. Each deck has its strengths as well, and determined gamers may find themselves experimenting to find the best board for each race.
Downhill Jam is broken up into ten tiers, each with anywhere from six to thirteen challenges a pop, jetting skaters across the world from Chicago to the Alps to Rome to Hong Kong. At its core, this is a racing game, and the majority of the dozens upon dozens of individual missions pit players against either other skaters or a constantly winding-down clock. One of the most frequent challenges skaters have to face is the slalom, which opens with just a few seconds on the clock, and every gate players pass through tacks on just a little more time. This gets pretty demanding, especially in the last third of the game when it boils down to lightning fast reflexes and near-memorization of the layout of each stage. Other challenges including knocking down as many passers-by as possible, demolishing street carts and port-o-potties to rack up thousands upon thousands of dollars in damage, grinding across vast expanses of Hong Kong and a Chicago mall before the clock runs out, or nailing enough tricks to build up stratospheric point totals.
The difficulty is extremely light early on -- most players will be hard-pressed to land anything but a gold or silver medal on their first couple tries until the fourth tier or so -- but the game gets steadily tougher, and some of the later challenges are unflinchingly brutal. The crafty computer AI knows the ins and outs of every level, and sometimes the key to mastering a race is just keeping an eye on where the guy in front of you is heading. There are numerous different paths to the finish line, and the more you play, the more nooks and crannies you uncover to gain just that little bit more of an edge. The earlier challenges use a tiny portion of these maps and take thirty or forty seconds to polish off, but as the game draws to a close, these expansive maps demand right at three minutes to travel from one end to the other.
Downhill Jam suffers from a few hiccups, although in some cases, they're kinda welcome. I'd occasionally be in 2nd or 3rd place and plunge off a cliff only to respawn in the lead. There were several times where I'd get turned around and start skating uphill; I'm not blaming that on the game, but as odd as this sounds, it takes a few seconds to clue in that I'm blowing my lead, and the "wrong way" warning never appears in time to be useful. In some of the elimination races -- where the skater in last place is periodically bounced out until there's only one racer remaining -- the indicator at the top of the screen would flicker frantically between telling me I was in first place and dead last. Not that it's Toys for Bob's fault, but Downhill Jam's multiplayer doesn't take advantage of the Wii's online might. There are a good number of different multiplayer options, but split-screen just seems so 1999. Oh well. None of these downsides are deal-killers.
What Downhill Jam pulls off better than anything else is conveying a blazing sense of speed. I haven't had this much fun going this fast since the days of Sonic on the Genesis, and the frame rate doesn't sputter or stutter even when the game is at its most hectic. The game's characters have a clean, colorful Saturday morning look to 'em, and even though the graphics overall aren't particularly eye-popping, everything looks decent enough when whizzing by. The game's bolstered by a phenomenal licensed soundtrack as well, featuring contributions by White Zombie, Thursday, Anti-Flag, Lagwagon, The Descendents, Iron Maiden, Bad Brains, Motorhead, Public Enemy, and Shadows Fall, just to rattle off a few.
Downhill Jam tosses out the familiar Tony Hawk gameplay in favor of a fast and frenzied racing game, and because it is such a sharp turn in a different direction, fans of the franchise may want to consider giving this spin-off a rental before shelling out fifty bucks. As skeptical as I was before popping Downhill Jam into my Wii, I found myself immediately appreciating the change of pace, flipping over the breakneck speed and arcade-style gameplay. Very highly recommended as a rental; recommended as a purchase.
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam, as you could probably guess from the title, sees the legendary skater and a small army of cartoony caricatures careening downhill, racing against each other or the clock in eight sprawling international locales. Despite some quippy interviews with the skaters before each event, there's not much more to the storyline than "race" and "win", so I'll dive headfirst into the gameplay.
The game tosses the nunchuck aside and is played with just the Wiimote, which is held lengthwise like an old-school NES controller. Your skater is pretty much always plunging downhill by default, nudged left or right by tilting the controller to either side. The '1' and '2' buttons cover most everything else: ollies, grinds, grab tricks, wallrides, sticker slaps, and flip tricks. A press of the D-pad helps determine which trick you're pulling off, and it can also be used to knock competing skaters off-balance or pummel passing-by pedestrians. Rack up enough tricks and your "Zone Bone" meter is gradually filled, and the quick bursts of speed it unleashes are essential to coming out on top of the more grueling races later in the game. Using the 'A' button to pull off power slides gives players a similar edge.
Even with the remote tilting and Downhill Jam relying on just a couple of buttons that are each pulling double or triple duty, the control scheme is remarkably intuitive. The learning curve flattens out entirely after wading through the opening tutorials for a few minutes, and I found the controls tight, responsive, and almost immediately accessible. Even after sinking more than fourteen hours into the game, I could never blame the controls for losing a race.
Although Toys for Bob has packed on a healthy assortment of tricks -- pretty much all of the Tony Hawk standards minus reverts and manuals -- there's no real point in memorizing all of the button combinations. Downhill Jam never requires players to pull off a specific trick the way the other games in the series have, and with as tough as it is to bail off your board, frenzied button mashing is all it takes to tally up a few hundred thousand points. Considering the series' long-standing emphasis on nailing complicated tricks, this greatly simplified approach in Downhill Jam may be a turnoff to longtime fans of the franchise, but I thought the feverish button mashing was a perfect fit with the frenetic pace of the game.
The usual battalion of licensed skaters has been tossed aside. Tony Hawk is on the roster, naturally, alongside such colorful and newly-created characters as prissy celebutante Tiffany, monotone goth chick Jynx, and faux-Rastafarian Budd. A create-a-skater feature is also included if you want to roll your own, but it's not nearly as robust as previous installments in the series. Each character has his or her own skill set with varying balances of speed, turning, combat, and the like, starting off with just one low-end deck. The more races you win, the more you unlock, including additional skaters, new outfits, and more capable boards. Each deck has its strengths as well, and determined gamers may find themselves experimenting to find the best board for each race.
Downhill Jam is broken up into ten tiers, each with anywhere from six to thirteen challenges a pop, jetting skaters across the world from Chicago to the Alps to Rome to Hong Kong. At its core, this is a racing game, and the majority of the dozens upon dozens of individual missions pit players against either other skaters or a constantly winding-down clock. One of the most frequent challenges skaters have to face is the slalom, which opens with just a few seconds on the clock, and every gate players pass through tacks on just a little more time. This gets pretty demanding, especially in the last third of the game when it boils down to lightning fast reflexes and near-memorization of the layout of each stage. Other challenges including knocking down as many passers-by as possible, demolishing street carts and port-o-potties to rack up thousands upon thousands of dollars in damage, grinding across vast expanses of Hong Kong and a Chicago mall before the clock runs out, or nailing enough tricks to build up stratospheric point totals.
The difficulty is extremely light early on -- most players will be hard-pressed to land anything but a gold or silver medal on their first couple tries until the fourth tier or so -- but the game gets steadily tougher, and some of the later challenges are unflinchingly brutal. The crafty computer AI knows the ins and outs of every level, and sometimes the key to mastering a race is just keeping an eye on where the guy in front of you is heading. There are numerous different paths to the finish line, and the more you play, the more nooks and crannies you uncover to gain just that little bit more of an edge. The earlier challenges use a tiny portion of these maps and take thirty or forty seconds to polish off, but as the game draws to a close, these expansive maps demand right at three minutes to travel from one end to the other.
Downhill Jam suffers from a few hiccups, although in some cases, they're kinda welcome. I'd occasionally be in 2nd or 3rd place and plunge off a cliff only to respawn in the lead. There were several times where I'd get turned around and start skating uphill; I'm not blaming that on the game, but as odd as this sounds, it takes a few seconds to clue in that I'm blowing my lead, and the "wrong way" warning never appears in time to be useful. In some of the elimination races -- where the skater in last place is periodically bounced out until there's only one racer remaining -- the indicator at the top of the screen would flicker frantically between telling me I was in first place and dead last. Not that it's Toys for Bob's fault, but Downhill Jam's multiplayer doesn't take advantage of the Wii's online might. There are a good number of different multiplayer options, but split-screen just seems so 1999. Oh well. None of these downsides are deal-killers.
What Downhill Jam pulls off better than anything else is conveying a blazing sense of speed. I haven't had this much fun going this fast since the days of Sonic on the Genesis, and the frame rate doesn't sputter or stutter even when the game is at its most hectic. The game's characters have a clean, colorful Saturday morning look to 'em, and even though the graphics overall aren't particularly eye-popping, everything looks decent enough when whizzing by. The game's bolstered by a phenomenal licensed soundtrack as well, featuring contributions by White Zombie, Thursday, Anti-Flag, Lagwagon, The Descendents, Iron Maiden, Bad Brains, Motorhead, Public Enemy, and Shadows Fall, just to rattle off a few.
Downhill Jam tosses out the familiar Tony Hawk gameplay in favor of a fast and frenzied racing game, and because it is such a sharp turn in a different direction, fans of the franchise may want to consider giving this spin-off a rental before shelling out fifty bucks. As skeptical as I was before popping Downhill Jam into my Wii, I found myself immediately appreciating the change of pace, flipping over the breakneck speed and arcade-style gameplay. Very highly recommended as a rental; recommended as a purchase.