Tony Hawk hasn’t gone through very many facelifts since its first appearance over six years ago. The game has managed to revamp its gameplay only minimally, but has stayed a successful franchise all the way through. After Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam was announced for the Wii, one could only wonder if too much change was a good thing. The game still keeps most of the abilities previous Tony Hawk games had, namely the ability to pull off some insane, unbelievable tricks, but now it adds the fast paced action of a racing game. However during the genre change from typical Tony Hawk game to SSX-esque trick-racing game, the title gains a few problems.

Down We Go
The first thing you notice when you start playing Downhill Jam is that you hold the Wii-mote horizontally, with no use of the nunchuck. By simply tilting the controller to either the left or right your skateboard will respond respectively with precision. This motion feels very fluid, and it really shows how much effort the developers put into making the game easy to pick up and play. The 1 and 2 buttons handle grinding and jumping while the A button lets you powerslide at higher speeds around corners. In the event that you fall you just hop back on your board by shaking the Wii-mote around a little bit. The D-Pad is used in multiple ways. If you’re in the air you can use it to do tricks, but if you are on the ground it can be used to push and shove other racers.

Downhill Jam features a dozen character choices, although you only start out with 8 and Tony Hawk is the only licensed skateboarder. The game does allow you to create your own characters, but the customization isn’t as deep as one would like. The other preset characters aside from Tony Hawk himself fall very much into the realm of stereotypes. You have everyone ranging from a muscle shirt wearing “tough guy” to a punk skater chick. Depending on who you chose, they’ll give you a glimpse into their personality via a short movie. The game features 8 real-world locations in which the races take place in, but over 100 races to take part in. This basically means the entire course will not be revealed in a single race. The locations are very diverse and take place in different continents, for example Machu Pichu in South America, and Rome in Europe. Each location is an accurate representation of that location in real life.

The game has many different modes such as elimirace, slalom, trick, and steal the head. Elimirace has the last person to cross certain sections of the course, eliminated from the race. The last person still racing wins. In slalom you race against time, but you can gain more by passing through gates. In trick races it’s not about who finishes first but more about who has the highest score. You have to finish the race in the time given, but the person with the highest score wins. In this race sometimes it’s better to be the last one across the line. Steal the head is probably the most unique and original gameplay mode. The person in the lead gets to have a head, while everyone else scrambles frantically to take first place to get the head. The person with the most time holding the head wins the game. Downhill Jam does have support for four person multiplayer, but only through split-screen which is unfortunate because it would be more enjoyable if it had either online or even LAN.



Downhill Jam’s racing does a good job of creating a fast pace of speed. When traveling down a course you can pick up speed by boosting around corners through powerslides. In, addition if you fill up your trick meter you get extra boosts. At some point you’ll be wondering if you can get any faster, and chances are you can and will. While going this fast the game definitely creates a sense of tension, and sometimes if you manage to get off track you’ll actually end up skating backwards, uphill. The game does let you know you’re going the wrong way, but it’s still a nuisance that occurs more often than it should. To deal with this, the developers have included a respawn button, but this does end up taking a moment of your time that could lead to you losing your first place position.