Proving Ground demo on Live

By Robert Purchese Published 12 September, 2007

Flick it up the nose pump.

Tony Hawk has finally finished work on the demo for his ninth game, and released it today on Xbox Live [it's possible you've misunderstood - Ed].

It drops in at just over a gigabyte, and will let you skate around a small portion of the Proving Ground world.

Things you might like to try out on your adventures are the new Nail the Grab controls, where clicking the analogue sticks lets you control your hands when your board is airborne - or maybe you want to cut your own skating video with the new capturing and editing controls.

But there's lots more than that to come. You'll be able to modify your own indoor skate park in a great big garage, then invite your friends over for a cup of tea, for example. Or mess around with the scenery of the world to make your own organic skate-rink.

Plus it's all much bigger than last time around, and developer Neversoft is promising some bizarre music-synchronising video editing system (a bit like Guitar Hero note-matching) in the final box.

Proving Ground has also managed to not only retain the back-to-basics feel of Tony Hawk's Project 8, but improve on it with a grittier, more urban feel.

John Walker of writing fame went to see the game very recently, and came out with a large smile on his face. With hot competition from EA and Skate, now looks like the perfect time for Tony Hawk's to pull off a real tour de force.

Head over to our first impressions of Tony Hawk's Proving Ground to see why all signs point to must buy.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is due out on PS3, Xbox 360, PS2 and Wii on 9th October

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 4 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • menage #1 4 years ago

    Cool, check it out tonight

  • morriss #2 4 years ago

    "Tony Hawk has finally finished work on the demo for his ninth game, and released it today on Xbox Live [it's possible you've misunderstood - Ed]."

    :D

  • mikew1985 #3 4 years ago

    @ bengalibengali

    ... Why?

  • JayeM #4 4 years ago

    Good fun.

  • tinners #5 4 years ago

    easily skate for me, its evolution unlike hawks im afraid, still a solid frame rate this time round would help things im just more into the reality of skate rather than impossible tricks.

  • sanctusmortis #6 4 years ago

    The problem with the last game were the sometimes ridiculous achievements - trying to get all the gaps in this new cheatless culture was a massive frustration to many, as were the hich score challenges.

    Skate, however, looks fresh and inviting. Natch, I'm waiting for reviews.

  • mattigan #7 4 years ago

    There was a glitch you could abuse to get the high score achievements in THP8 in about 2 minutes with very little effort. Not that I did though, couldn't be arsed.

  • Darren #8 4 years ago

    I was downloading this morning and it was doing so very quickly (for a change) but had to leave for work at the 66% mark (which took only 10 minutes!) so didn't get chance to try it. Last year's game was good but spoilt by the awful framerate and the game wasn't even running natively at 720p, it was another of those 600p upscaled titles like PGR 3 and Call of Duty 3. I really hope Neversoft have fixed the framerate this year... oh and that annoying bug which forced you to watch an unskippable dreary slow-mo intro every other time you loaded the game up! :?

  • mattigan #9 4 years ago

    I had that too!! It actually spoilt the game for me, as it actually got longer and longer the more I played1?! WTF was all that about!

  • SomaticSense #10 4 years ago

    Started getting bored of Tony Hawk's at about the time of THPS4, and had fully had enough by the time of THUG's release. Project 8 didn't do anything for me at all.

    So with this in mind, plus the fact that Skate seems to actually tries to do something different, unlike Tony Hawk's, I'll be giving this mammoth 1.4gig download a miss.

  • dwu #11 4 years ago

    THPG feels very very dated after playing Skate. Sorry Tony, but EA is getting my money this time.

  • petebritish #12 4 years ago

    Great demo loads of new features. Looks good,I hope I can kill Eric though at some stage. He is annoying as hell.

    Loads better than Skate demo, which was way too frustrating to have FUN!! You might get a sense of achievement with Skate but its at the expense of enjoying playing. IMO

    It seems to be like Pro Evo Vs FIFA or Burnout Vs Forza.

    One gets the adrenaline going with edge of the seat gameplay the other is like a game of Chess via email. Satisfying yet?!

  • Christafo #13 4 years ago

    TH has completely lost its appeal now that i've played skate.

    I'll still play the older versions of the game for nostalgia, but nothing comes close to the fuiliditiy of skate's gameplay.

  • orac1971 #14 4 years ago

    sanctusmortis "The problem with the last game were the sometimes ridiculous achievements - trying to get all the gaps in this new cheatless culture was a massive frustration to many, as were the hich score challenges.

    Skate, however, looks fresh and inviting. Natch, I'm waiting for reviews."

    IGN 9.0/10

    [link url=htt p://xbox360.ign.com/articles/818/818832p1.html
    ]http://xb ox360.ign.com/articles/818/8188...[/link]

    no flatground tricks or handplants

    Impressed with Skate though... but not fully sure yet.

  • Lukus #15 4 years ago

    Who wants realism in a videogame? I know I don't. I want to be able to perform ridiculously unachievable (in real life) stunts.

  • Perjoss #16 4 years ago

    I really, really wanted to like Skate, but I had 1 big problem with it: the camera angle (for me at least is bad), I cant see what is in front of me, if I'm trying to line up to a rail for a grind my character is in the way, I was only able to pull off 50% or less attempts when trying to do a simple grind. I didnt find any option to change the camera angle. I understand why they did it this way from an artistic angle, but I hated it as I fell its not good for gameplay, It just does not feel right to not be able to see where you are going.
    Edited by 1 at 13/09/07 @ 08:42