Reviews// Tony Hawk's Project 8 (Xbox 360)

At first, you'll find yourself accidentally going onto Focus mode at random. As you get excited during a 360 flip, stalefish transfer, everything will blur out, the music will fade away and your skater will slow down, bringing a fabulous dramatic tension to the whole game. But as you begin to learn the force of Focus mode, you will begin to control it, and soon it becomes a powerful ally in your battle to beat THP8.

The other new (Mc)Twist in THP8 is ‘Nail The Trick’ mode. This is an extension of Focus mode but unlike Focus Mode, it does not require your special meter to be charged before you can activate it - you can do it at any time during the game. When you're in the air you can click on the sticks and activate focus mode... but you now also have completely independent control of either foot on the board. With a flip up (assuming you’re riding regular and facing forward) you'll heel the right edge of your board, instigating a heelflip. Pull down and you toe the left rail. Using combinations of the two you can imitate an almost infinite number of ollie tricks.

Once you've initiated the flip or board-spin, you need to keep your feet out of the way (keep holding the sticks) until the board re-orientates itself correctly under your feet - griptape up. Now you can either let go of the sticks, or move them in another direction to start a new flip. You can chain flips, impossibles, varials and whatever your brain and fingers can come up with together. It is actually awesome. And, because it all takes place in glorious slo-mo, it's fabulous for spectators too.

THP8 features exactly the kind of soundtrack you'd expect for a game like this (Wolfmother, Kasabian, Eagles of Death Metal, Joy Division, even Kool and the Gang, feature). You might love it, you might loathe it - but it's there if you want it. If not, just whack your MP3 player on and session to your own sounds.

For our money THP8 is the greatest game in the Tony Hawk's series, and that makes it the greatest skateboarding game ever made. Whether Skate featuring Danny Way will be able to challenge its claim to the skating crown remains to be seen - check out our preview here.

I'm not sure that golfers love golf games; I'm a pretty serious driver, and driving games frustrate me, incapable as they are of capturing that seat-of-the-pants feedback - the information you get from tyre noise on the road. But I am pretty sure that every real skater out there will love this game.

SPOnG Score: A+

THP8 has its faults, and quite a few of them. But none of them changes the fact that this game is good enough to make those of us without a 360 want to go out and buy one. It captures that free-roaming, carefree sense of adventure that skateboarding should be about, even if it isn't always in reality. It promotes the creativity and responsiveness that saves a cool move from turning into a face-plant. It captures the intangible, but very real, spirit of skating more than any previous game in the Tony Hawk series - more than any game ever.