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The Tony Hawk franchise has been around for a long time. With Project 8 marking the eighth entry to the series (duh), the birdman is going back to his roots with a more realistic art direction (in contrast to the THUG and American Wasteland flavor of animated style) and a mix of goals that feel like a combination of classic Pro Skater goals and THUG style mayhem. Unfortunately for PS2 fans, the last-gen versions of the title don’t nearly live up to the enjoyment and playability of their next-gen counterparts.

The biggest fault in the PS2 version of Tony Hawk’s latest is that unlike the next-gen versions, which feature an open-ended to explore, this version of Project 8 has the entire city broken up into 10 different areas, and playing through them like the olden Pro Skater days.

The game follows your created character as he climbs the ranks from the bottom of the food chain (#200 of 200) to one of the top 8 amateur skaters around, and landing a place in the coveted Project 8: a group of killer skaters put together and chosen by the Hawk man himself. Everything you do in Project 8 will help you move toward this goal. Every gap, goal and challenge you pass will aid you in your climb to the top.

Thankfully there is no shortage in goals and challenges for you to complete in the franchises latest outing. You’ll find plenty to keep yourself busy in the city, from old-hat goals to some of the newly constructed challenges new to the franchise.

As you traverse the city, you’ll find that certain characters are highlighted. Some of these characters will open up Classic Mode challenges, which give you 2 minutes to complete a set of goals within a given area of the city. If you’re really pro, you’ll be able to do all 10 in one single run for the SICK score. Good luck!

There’s also the addition of the “Owned” graffiti tags scattered throughout the city that, when activated, challenge you to match a track line as far as you can in order to claim that area for your own. Some tests involve grinds, while others involve manuals.

Most of the challenges come in three distinctive flavors: Amateur, Pro and Sick, each one requiring a higher level of skill. Amateur goals, as you may guess, are simple challenges meant more for newcomers to the franchise than vets. Pro is for the vets, which require moderately more skill than the Amateur goals, but are still nothing when compared to the Sick goals. Sick goals will challenge even the most Tony Hawk elite. They demand inhuman feats to be completed under insane conditions. Fulfilling every challenge in the game under the sick rating is something anyone can be truly proud of.

Aside from the standard challenges, there’s also Pro Challenges that take place after you’ve earned yourself certain spots on the ranking list. These challenges introduce the pro skaters into the fold, from Bob Burnquist to Ryan Sheckler and of course, Bam Margera. These goals usually play out similar to other challenges (except the likes of Bob Burnquist’s do-a-bunch-of-tricks-after-leaping-out-of-a-helicopter goal), but with the addition of interaction with the sports highlight pros.

In the next-gen version of Project 8, stat progression was built seamlessly into your actual progression in the game, eliminating tedious stat-building that was present in previous iterations of the series. Unfortunately, in the PS2 version, stat points are back. However, as somewhat a form of compensation for it, you do get the added ability to increase your speed, something the next-gen versions didn’t have.

In addition to all the insane new challenges you’ll be forced to complete, there’s also a sweet new addition to your arsenal of tricks: Nail the Trick. Whenever you’re catching some air, press down on both thumbsticks and you enter Nail the Trick mode. In Nail the Trick mode, time slows just as it does in Focus Mode, and you’re able to control your skaters feet with each thumbstick. Doing so flips the board around according to your movements, allowing you to effectively create insanely monstrous tricks. There’s even goals peppered throughout the game that challenge you to complete a certain number of flips before you hit ground again. For whatever reason, though, the developers responsible for the PS2 version decided to dumb it down for gamers, and now the board actually flashes when you’re suppose to kick it, removing any of the challenge from the feature, and thus making it pretty weak and ultimately useless.

As insult to injury, the developers have somehow managed to turn the PS2 version of Project 8 into Tony Hawk for Dummies. You now have the ability to manual with the push of a button. Yes. And to make matters worse, you don’t have to revert out of a quarter/half pipe. Pressing the manual button covers it all for you. It’s ridiculous, and should have never been altered. I don’t know who green-lit that wonderful idea, but it’s just one of the many glaring issues this version of the game has.

Customization is at a low in this installment, offering you a very limited create-a-skater, and excluding create-a-park all together. In a series that has been offering increasing amounts of customizability, its curious (and disappointing) to see such a decline in attention to one of the series’ most popular feature sets.

When it comes to multiplayer, forget it. The PS2 version of the game has been completely stripped of all online capability. Why? Good question, and I’m guessing we’ll never get an answer.

In terms of sound, the Tony Hawk series has always offered up a great soundtrack in addition to great sound effects. In Project 8, we get both, yet again. The soundtrack is as big and varied as ever, offering up a little something for everyone. The sound effects are exactly what you’d expect by now, and get the job done effortlessly.

Graphically, the series has never been better. Offering up fluid animation and a realistic art style akin to the Pro Skater series, this is the best looking Tony Hawk yet. Every environment is well populated, both by NPC characters and environment to trick off of. The areas of the game all have a distinct style, and though we’ve seen many of the themes used here in previous iterations of the series, they’re still welcome in my books.

Project 8 on the PS2 is a perfect example of how to ruin a perfectly good product with a few bad decisions. After screwing up Nail-the-Trick, removing online multiplayer, zapping the open-ended world, and completely violating the manual, this version of Project 8 is an empty shell of its next-gen brethren.