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For uncountable hours the Tony Hawk games took my friends and I to a realm where even the least physically capable of us could do tricks professional skaters would be jealous of. From the outset Tony Hawk's Pro Skater's easy control system, ability upgrades, and multiplayer capabilities made it a favorite among everyone I knew. Challenges sprang up from top scores, highest points on a single trick, longest slide, even nastiest fall. The longevity involved in the multiplayer experience when placed in conjunction with a new game released about once a year made Tony Hawk's Skater games definite winners. Tony Hawk had us at “kickflip.”

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground is the newest title in the Tony Hawk franchise. Like it's predecessors, Proving Ground allows the player to control a skater new to the skate scene and shape him (or her) into a skateboarding champion. The story takes place in three East-coast cities; Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. While the city streets are far from being accurately mapped, some locations will be easily recognizable to anyone familiar with the cities themselves. Our hero travels around these three cities gaining recognition and “street cred.” During the process of gaining popularity among the other skaters the player chooses from three styles Career, Hardcore, and Rigger. Career allows for intricate tricks being pulled off flawlessly. Hardcore skaters skate aggressively and amaze onlookers by defying gravity with huge aerial tricks. Riggers do one thing well, they modify the world around them to create the ultimate skating experience.

During gameplay players must search for mentors to teach them particular tricks within any given style and can either choose to master one style or they can be well-rounded and learn as much as they can from each of the schools. Completing these “quests” also unlocks new parts gives money to buy parts for your Skate Lounge. Your Skate Lounge is a warehouse which you can fix up into a skater's dream. Rails, bowls, pipes, benches, the player modifies his or her Skate Lounge to show off skills and relax from the day-to-day “grind” of “manual” labor.

The controls are easy enough that my ten year old sister picked up Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and was doing aerial tricks to make any pro skater jealous without any coaching from anyone. The control system hasn't changed at all. Separate buttons kickflip, jump, and grind. With the use of the directional pad, variations of these simple maneuvers develop into Darkslides, Benihanas, and 360 kickflips. Overall I feel the control system to be the only area where there need not be any improvement. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Proving Grounds allows the player to create and edit their own skate videos with a nice array of editing tools. The video editing is easy to use and allows for quite a bit of modification of the videos themselves. I did find it interesting that pedestrians and vehicles are both automatically edited out of the videos. This leads to some funny shots of bounding off invisible people and cars. Unfortunately players cannot record anything they have already done. If the player didn't start recording before his huge aerial trick landing in a manual it is lost forever. Also Tony Hawk's Proving Grounds does not allow players to share their videos with others. In this age of online gaming and sharing accomplishments with others who share the same interests almost amounts to heresy.

The multiplayer games are still the most fun whether they be simple point challenges or seeing how many cars we could bound off of without falling. Games such as “Graffiti” can get pretty boring if playing in the whole worldmap as it was rare to be near enough to another player to have them steal your tag. My personal favorite is the addition of “Walls” which is a game any fan of Tron should be quite familiar with. Each player leaves a wall as a trail behind them. Players cannot go through any walls, even their own. The goal is to leave your opponents no means of escape so that they crash. Tony Hawk's Proving Ground allows for up to 8 players to be on one map at any one time although once the count gets over five or six the performance begins to drop dramatically. The character models and environments improved upon the last installment of the franchise, yet took second place to the other skate title released this year. This left me feeling that the developers held themselves back in order to leave room for improvement in the next title. The audio, as always, is wonderful. The sound effects are accurate enough that veteran skaters could tell a kickflip from an ollie simply from the audio. The soundtrack, like previous titles, is an upbeat and exciting mix of Rap, Punk, and Metal with the capability to add in your own music at will.

Many years later my friends and I still make challenges involving Tony Hawk games, although they get rarer every year. This is because despite expanded environments, new goal-oriented challenges, and an increased number of tricks the franchise really hasn't changed all that dramatically. For lack of a better term I feel th franchise has been resting on their laurels a little too long. That laziness has resulted in another title getting the better of them. No longer will it be enough to slightly improve the graphics, add a few new tricks, and change the goals. If it comes out Tony Hawk Pro Skater 10 will have to be as cutting edge in the now as the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater was back in “the day.”