As the UK suffers from some insane floods and hysterical rain smack bang in the middle of the bloody summer, it’s safe to say that we’re a little tired of getting soggy. You might also say that, for the most part, the UK has somewhat of an affinity with the rain; we know what to expect. It is with this in mind that Bioshock has been on our wanted list for some downright lush water effects. Tony Hawk’s Project 8 has some rubbish water in it, but then Skating has never really been about water – well for now at least anyway.

THP8 boasts the biggest game they’ve done yet, with one big world to explore and over 200 missions to complete, each at Amateur, Pro and Sick level; so you’ll have plenty to do. You’ll have access to Nail the Trick (Patent Pending) mode which allows you control over your feet in slow-motion to mix into your combos, with the already implemented Focus Mode (Which is annoyingly bound to L3), it feels that overall, the idea is to get you heavily involved with the general trick process.

While for the most part I may not actually find a great deal to say about any skating game, if this was a Skating sim I imagine it would be quite, quite dire. That’s always been the real plus side to the Tony Hawk’s series, in that it tries not to be a serious skater game, but what a game actually should be – fun!

For those of you familiar with the series, all the usual tricks and challenges are still in there, but while the level-by-level stages are in effect gone due to a now open terrain setting, they still remain as separate ‘classic’ challenges whereby you have to complete multiple tasks within one challenge as you did previously. Other than that, there’ll be a whole bunch of tasks to undergo throughout the various sections of your environment, and each of those will have 3 different challenge ratings: Am, Pro, Sick. Even if you complete a challenge at Amatuer stage, you can always go back to try your luck later; it’ll help in getting your rank where it needs to be, as all your efforts are geared toward Project 8.

‘What’s Project 8?’ I hear you indecipherably murmur. Well, it’s Tony Hawk’s way of getting everyone to show off for his benefit and take the best 8 of the crop. You, of course being one of those skater-boy types wants in. And good luck to you! There will be times you’ll want to storm off and break your board in half, wailing for your Mom (yes it’s an American game). But remember, these challenges are there to test you and when you finally pull off one of those mega 250K combos you’ll feel all the better for it and hopefully pick up a decent sponsor along the way.

I personally got into the second in the series heavily, so when the third came along and the way you landed moves, and how accurate you had to be, had changed, I found it a lot more difficult to get back into it again. Sometimes change is necessary, although I’m not sure if that applies thinking back, we’re stuck with those changes now so lets not dawdle on them. We’re also playing the PS3 version, which currently seems to involve taking an already existing game and porting it across, which my god shows in places. Namely the framerate, but the lack of lighting and flat textures avoid immersing a player and relying on gameplay to make up the shortfall. This, in itself isn’t really a problem as we often complain of games that are an eyeful with a lack of actual content, and for us THP8 is all about gameplay.

Talking of “us” we gave the multiplayer a good bash and a laugh. It has several different game modes that range from “Graffiti” where you mark your territory by pulling off high scoring combos and landing on an area, to “Horse” (which we rename to something far worse) where you take turns to try and beat each others scores, whereby the loser gets one of the letters, game ending on completion of the word. That happened to be our favourite, which largely came down to not having to be in the splitscreen mode where the framerate appears most hideous.

I’d have to get my little gripes about the game in, which are pretty much the ones that have always been there, with some exceptions. My main issue has always been getting stuck in a narrow alley being battered back and forth from one wall to another. While you can swap to walking, or wall-ride out of these situations it’s ultimately frustrating to get into in the first place. Additionally, if I hear Wolfmother one more time I’m going to shove the entire pointy-angled album up Tony Hawk’s rear for approving the set list!

After all that, I’d redeem him for a fun little series and another instalment that does it justice. I’ve played some other skateboarding games that have attempted to jump on the bandwagon, but have ultimately missed the half-pipe and ground their groins on a rail. Ouch. Tony Hawk’s still works some heel-flipping magic.