Tuesday 5 September 2006
The innovative Nail the Trick mode in Tony Hawk's Project 8 marks the skateboarding series' first real evolution, as this latest next-gen footage shows off nicely.
Nail the Trick gives you direct control over your skater's legs with the joypad sticks and enables you to invent your own flipping combos on the fly. Sound too complicated? It's not - just check out the new gameplay footage on the movies tab to see how straightforward Nail the Trick really is.
With the title due to hit current and next-gen consoles later this year, we recently took the opportunity to get hands-on with Project 8 and its new controls. If you're a hard-tuned fan you might find Nail the Trick mode a little awkward at first but we found that it's a great addition to a (whisper it) fairly samey series in danger of heading to dullsville - it's amazing that the Neversoft guys have got such a complex idea to work so solidly.
Above: In words Nail the Trick sounds clumsy but in practise it's actually very smooth
Our only concern is the unavoidable second or so delay between releasing the ollie button and thumbing in the sticks. As any long-term Hawk's player will know, every millisecond is crucial and big scores demand instant tricking the minute you leave the ground or lip of a jump, which could be frustrating with the Nail the Trick system. We'll be getting some more board-time with Tony Hawk's Project 8 soon.
