Growing up male in southern California in the 80’s and 90’s meant you were practically issued a skateboard, so all of my friends and I have always used the Tony Hawk games to pull off tricks that we’d otherwise never be able to do. Now we’re getting older, and after injuries and subsequent surgeries or broken bones and paranoid girlfriends, we’ve kind of lost our touch; and since none of us are too keen on having a hip replaced before we hit 30, our skateboarding stays mostly virtual these days. That’s why I was so excited when Activision first started to talk about the latest skateboarding game from Neversoft, Tony Hawk’s Project Eight. The controls have been totally revamped, the physics system is all new, and there’s actual motion capture for tricks now? This I had to see.

The plot behind this installment is a little different than the rest of the series. The basic concept is that Tony Hawk is searching for the 8 best skaters around to take on a world tour, and you’ve got to be one of them. As you progress and complete goals, or break records and improve stats, your ranking will go up, and once you get inside the top 8, you’re officially part of Project 8. These rankings are not in any way connected to other actual players, but are simply a representation of how many goals you’ve completed.

As you complete more objectives, new areas will open up, and the first time you head to a new area, you’ll notice something distinctly missing from this game. Loading screens are nowhere to be found between areas. Unlike Tony Hawks American Wasteland, which boasted a no-loading buffer system, this game really delivers. In THAW, you may remember that while there were no loading screens, there were oddly sparse tunnels you would have to skate through instead. That’s not the case this time. Everything streams right out of gameplay, making this feel almost completely seamless, something I consider to be a true hallmark of this next console generation.

The areas seem better tied together this time as well. Rather than feel like a bunch of places clumped together with model airplane glue, this landscape actually feels like a city with multiple distinct areas. There’s a slum area, a school, a skate park, the capitol building, a theme park and more. Something else that was refreshing is that there’s no recycling of levels this time, something that has been done in every Tony Hawk game since the first sequel. There are some tributes to older areas that sharp-eyed players will catch, such as the school gymnasium. For the most part, however, everything feels brand new, and that was an absolute necessity if the game environment wanted to keep up with the gameplay.

And that’s important, because gameplay is where this title shines brightest. The old controls are in fact still there, so the Y button is still grind, the triggers still do reverts, and you can do all of the old tricks you expect, just how you would expect to do them. All of the animations have been redone, many with actual motion capture, and all of the bails are completely physics driven now. It’s a very cool effect that you’ll probably never see anyone fall the same way twice, and there’s a broken bone mechanic that even adds a little fun when you’re falling. The collision physics will seem a little odd when you’re bouncing a few hundred feet in the air, but the funny factor more than makes up for that.