Tony Hawk Ride

From the cumbersome load times to the malfunctioning board it's just clunky. If you set it to casual and bring it out at a party it will draw some interest, but it won't take long before everyone realizes it's work to play, and ultimately, not very fun. At a steep $120, it's a bit of a wipeout.

RIDE could've been a great game with a broken controller and it still would've been tough to justify. Instead, its a lacklustre game, full of sloppy cuts and rehashed elements. Then on top of all that bad design, it fails to deliver on its only virtue.

The sad thing is that every once in a while you get a brief sense of what this game could have been. The trick-based gameplay shows occasional flashes of potential, and the board peripheral could have worked. Maybe somewhere in a parallel universe there's a reality where Robomodo pulled it off; unfortunately, we're stuck here - and in this world Tony Hawk: Ride falls on its arse, big time.

But sadly, Ride simply lacks the same quality providing and unimaginative playing experience that never seems to get out of the blocks and you may feel you’ve being taken for a ride with this game, especially considering its price!

What would make it better? If it had wheels. [Issue#91, p.118]

Controls that are either to broken or too difficult to use. [Issue#54, p.84]

Credit must be given for the leap of faith and attempt at doing something new. If Tony Hawk Ride had been a success it likely would have opened the door even further for these types of games that use peripherals to emulate real life objects. The problem is that the game feels rushed, the skateboard does not respond well enough to your movements and the game itself isn’t all that rewarding or exciting.

When it comes down to it, as the old saying goes, the name of the game is the game—and the game in Tony Hawk: Ride is far from what most people would call cutting-edge entertainment, especially when you look at the scope of what this console generation is releasing.

In the end, it’s a cool experiment, but it quickly goes horribly wrong.

It's fun for half an hour, but that's an awfully expensive 30 minutes. Don't buy RIDE unless you want to be taken for one.

Fuzzy skateboard controls are more frustrating than fun.

A big mistake made all the more unbearable for its few glimpses of promise. [Feb 2010, p.88]

Busted controls and stripped-down gameplay make Tony Hawk Ride an overpriced fiasco.

It would be easy to pinpoint the games faults solely on the new, unresponsive control scheme, but Ride's gameplay lacks several established principles of the skateboarding genre. Concepts as simple as session markers and on-foot travel are nonexistent, and the ability to restart a challenge mid-run (a longtime staple of the Pro Skater series) is simply not there.

Tony Hawk: Ride is a failed experiment that likely sounded great in a staff meeting. The idea isn’t a bad one. It’s the game that’s the problem.

Alright, so it's not entirely broken, and you can get better at using the board with enough practice. But that's the problem: You can only get better, you can't actually get good. You know, where you can reliably go where you want to and pull off the trick you want to, like you can in every other Tony Hawk game.

One of the bigger pieces of gaming junk that's come down the line in recent years.

While the skateboard controller seems to feel well built, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. You'll be spending more time fighting with the controller than trying to have fun with the game. Even then, the game's just not that enjoyable. Maybe next time Tony.

The Guinness Book of Records has but one contender for the least value-for-money video game ever made.

In theory, Tony Hawk: Ride could have been an interesting and fresh gaming experience, and Activision and Robomodo should at least be commended for taking a chance. But in execution, Tony Hawk: Ride falls flat in nearly every aspect.

Tony Hawk RIDE is rubbish.