Product ReviewsGames and Leisure
Skateboarding games have always been tough to pull off. Atari's 720: Skate was fun in the arcades of the mid-1980s, but otherwise armchair skaters were stuck without a decent game until the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater (THPS) came out three years ago for the PlayStation. The original THPS was highly entertaining, but relatively crude and based on the kind of fantasy terrain games producers always assume extreme sports fans want. All this changed when Activision shipped THPS2: the realism quota went up, with more real skaters and real skate terrain. The control method has also been improved and there are lots of new tricks, including the all-important manual (that's a wheelie to anyone born before 1976), which links up your tricks for massive bonuses. Control freak The genius of Tony Hawk is the balanced and responsive control system: after about five minutes of play you forget it's button A to ollie, button B to grab, and you begin to think of the tricks themselves. Unfortunately, keyboard control ruins this: the game is hard to play with a keyboard. It requires more subtle directional control than the arrow keys provide and frequent combinations that are too hard to pull off without looking at the keyboard. Sadly, the lack of InputSprocket for Mac OS X means you're stuck with this control method. However, if you're running Mac OS 9.1 or below, you can stick a decent USB gamepad in your Mac and things improve beyond all recognition. You need a fairly high-spec controller: an analogue directional control is preferable, and you need eight buttons to produce all the tricks -10 if you want pause and camera control as well. The Gravis Eliminator sports the PSX-like shoulder buttons that make playing THPS2 a breeze. The aim of the game is to play through each level, earning money by getting high scores and performing simple tasks. When you have enough money you can move to the next level. The levels
Level best The realism of some levels is astounding: the Marseille skatepark on which level three is based was featured on Eurosport recently and we were able to follow the skaters trick by trick across the undulating concrete. To progress through the levels you need to build up your skater's abilities with an RPG-like stats screen. You can also buy fancier and higher-scoring tricks, as well as lighter and faster boards. THPS2 gives you a coachload of real-life skaters to play as, from legendary figures such as Hawk and Steve Caballero to young whippersnappers such as Bucky Lasek. Each skater's stats reflect their particular skills, although the differences become less marked as you progress and build up your skater. If this isn't enough, you can also create your own skater from a range of body parts and clothing sponsors. The one glitch in the conversion from PlayStation to Mac is the sound effects: most of the effects are of the same high standard but some are much harsher than the original and, worse, get stuck in a loop until another effect takes over the channel. Other glitches include the annoying momentary freeze when the Mac checks the CD-ROM in the drive, usually halfway through a run. We couldn't get the higher-resolution options to work on our ATI-based iBook, so we suspect they'll be out of reach for all but owners of Macs with more recent video cards. The OS X version is identical to the OS 9 game. Aspyr claims it runs slightly faster on OS X, but we didn't notice any difference in frame rate. Anyway, you're stuck with the keyboard in OS X, so we tend to boot into OS 9 to play. The other disappointment is that the skatepark editor doesn't take full advantage of the mouse and keyboard. It's still constrained by the original's editing method, so creating a digital replica of PlayStation Skatepark is somewhat tedious. The big bonus with the Mac conversion is the addition of network play: THPS2 supports local area network play and Internet play using the GameRanger network. THPS2's multiplayer games aren't especially thrilling, but it's a nice way to show your chops off. With a gamepad, this is a sweet conversion from the PlayStation hit, providing speedy fun for skate fans and pedestrians alike. And you won't hurt your knees, either. NEEDS: PowerPC G3, hardware 3D acceleration, Mac OS 8.6 or later, 32Mb RAM, OpenGL 1.1, QuickTime 3.0 or higher By Jim Smith
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
