Reviews// Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam - SECOND OPINION
Xbox Renaults, Marmite birthday cakes, Hershey's laxatives and JCB lawnmowers
To win at THDJ, you'll need to trick onto some rails -
sliding is faster than skating - and use the boost you earn for tricks and slides to enhance your speed. Boost works both during wheels-down riding and during slides. Boost must be used judiciously though, because if you boost just before a tight turn, you will reduce your chance of making the turn.
So in essence, the game is an against-the-clock Tony Hawk's game, where every run is a hastily assembled combo of slides, and tricks.
Success in Downhill Jam depends greatly on learning the runs. First time down, you may spot a shortcut or two, but chances are, you'll be past them before you see them. Next time you try to take them, but because you fail to line up correctly, you miss them again. So, getting better takes practise and ingenuity. And that's really what you want from a racing game, isn't it?
The 'swing the remote to steer', and especially 'the swing the remote to balance during slides', control methods work very well. Steering round corners seems a little over-sensitive at first, but as with most Wii games, you quickly get the hang of it. And the sensitivity means that you can handle 90 degree bends at speed - and you'll need to.
Failing to make a bend, or hitting an obstacle will often result in you wiping out (crashing). If you do this, you have to shake the controller to get back onto your board and start skating again. You can also wipe out during protracted slides. Sliding is a very efficient way of completing a race, it's faster than skating, and many of the levels feature shortcuts than can only be taken by way of sliding. But as you slide, you have to maintain the balance of your skater using the Wii Remote. It's easy to get into a pendulum motion, with balance slowly getting worse and worse as you slide further - preventing this ending in a wipeout takes skill.
The game follows the well worn path of ranking to improve your stats, and as this happens, your balance will improve - and with it your ability to do very long slides without falling off. Finishing in the top three opens new tracks to race.
Some of the races are slalom, where you have to pass through blue 'gates' (in fact these are ethereal glowing magic portals) as you complete the course against an impossibly short time limit. Each gate you successfully pass through adds time to your limit and you score bonus points for the time left as you finish.
Some races require you to break things. As you complete the track, you run into (and "clobber") deformable items as you pass them, your ranking depends on you doing sufficient value of damage.
Downhill Jam represents the very worst kind of brand extension. In a world that has Xbox Renaults, Marmite birthday cakes, Hershey's laxatives and JCB lawnmowers, we've got way too much of one name being used to sell an unrelated and inappropriate product. The only thing Tony Hawk has to do with downhill skating is... hold on! Tony Hawk has nothing at all to do with downhill skating. It's like a Colin McRae Formula One game, or Roger Federer's Championship Squash.
It's risible and contemptible. But that's the way large corporations work... using the free market to mercilessly extend their competitive advantage and eliminate competition. It's contemptible, but in an unrestrained competitive environment, where companies have a duty to maximise revenue for their shareholders it's inevitable. And to be honest, if this was called Erik Lundberg's Downhill Jam, it's unlikely anyone would buy it, even if Erik would kick Tony's ass in downhill every day of the week.
But despite its distasteful pandering to the capitalist machine, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is also a very playable game. It's fun and requires you to make spot decisions that change your route - the right decision leads to speed and glory while the wrong one leads to wipeouts and ignominy. It's not as pure a gaming experience as Tony Hawk's Project 8, it's not as great a skateboarding game as that game either. But as a skateboard-themed novelty racing game, it pushes all the buttons. And as a Wii game, it uses the controller well.
SPOnG score: B
While it's not really a skateboarding game, and it's definitely not a downhill skateboarding game, Downhill Jam is a fun novelty racing game that has a good selection of race variations. It requires strategy to succeed and is an entertaining challenging gaming experience for the younger player. Or the less demanding older gamer who will play anything with a skateboard in it, like me!
So in essence, the game is an against-the-clock Tony Hawk's game, where every run is a hastily assembled combo of slides, and tricks.
Success in Downhill Jam depends greatly on learning the runs. First time down, you may spot a shortcut or two, but chances are, you'll be past them before you see them. Next time you try to take them, but because you fail to line up correctly, you miss them again. So, getting better takes practise and ingenuity. And that's really what you want from a racing game, isn't it?
The 'swing the remote to steer', and especially 'the swing the remote to balance during slides', control methods work very well. Steering round corners seems a little over-sensitive at first, but as with most Wii games, you quickly get the hang of it. And the sensitivity means that you can handle 90 degree bends at speed - and you'll need to.
The game follows the well worn path of ranking to improve your stats, and as this happens, your balance will improve - and with it your ability to do very long slides without falling off. Finishing in the top three opens new tracks to race.
Some races require you to break things. As you complete the track, you run into (and "clobber") deformable items as you pass them, your ranking depends on you doing sufficient value of damage.
It's risible and contemptible. But that's the way large corporations work... using the free market to mercilessly extend their competitive advantage and eliminate competition. It's contemptible, but in an unrestrained competitive environment, where companies have a duty to maximise revenue for their shareholders it's inevitable. And to be honest, if this was called Erik Lundberg's Downhill Jam, it's unlikely anyone would buy it, even if Erik would kick Tony's ass in downhill every day of the week.
SPOnG score: B
While it's not really a skateboarding game, and it's definitely not a downhill skateboarding game, Downhill Jam is a fun novelty racing game that has a good selection of race variations. It requires strategy to succeed and is an entertaining challenging gaming experience for the younger player. Or the less demanding older gamer who will play anything with a skateboard in it, like me!