James King, The Wiire Editor and IT Project Manager.
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam was a mixed bag for me. The graphics seemed merely average, and the implementation of the controller seemed unpolished.
Unlike previous titles in the series, Downhill Jam is a downhill racing title - think snowboarding without the snow. You performed turns by holding the Wiimote in the horizontal "driving" orientation and tilting left or right. This felt smooth and precise, but the difficulty came in trying to pull off tricks.
To be fair, it's hard to say whether it was difficult to pull off tricks because of the short amount of time I had with the game, or whether it was the fault of the control mechanics. I would wager an educated guess that it was a little of both.
To crouch/jump you had to hold/press the 2 button. Grabs were accomplished via holding the B button. Other tricks were mapped to the d-pad. Honestly, the setup seemed fairly cluttered to me. It was almost as if the team tried too hard to find buttons for everything rather than trying to re-think the dynamics of the game to suit the controller.
This left Tony Hawk feeling less intuitive than most titles on the floor. That's not to say that there's no fun to be had with the title. After totally botching my first race, I began to get a better feel for the setup and was able to pull off some elemenatry tricks. The best implementation thus far was attempting to balance during grinds.
As a racing game, the focus seems to be less on the tricks and more on getting to the finish line - certain tricks would afford you access to shortcuts, for instance. I believe this is the direction Activision is trying to bring the title in order to make it fun on Wii and to avoid the complexities of adapting the trick system on the Wii controller.
I'm willing to remain optimistic on the title, however. A layer of polish, some work on the graphics and a better, more intuitive trick system would potentially make Downhill Jam a solid addition to the Wii line-up.
Rob Galbreath, The Wiire Managing Editor
Tony Hawk. The name has become synonymous with skateboard games over the past several years, giving players a game that's easy to handle and challenging to master.
If you haven't played a Tony Hawk before, the real challenge rests in skateboard manuevers. By combining a series of button pushes at the right time with a good jump, a player can do practically any trick known to skateboard sports.
It really didn't feel like the Tony Hawk challenges and experimentation I'm used to trying out. I'm the kind of guy that likes to toy with the mechanics and really fool around with what the controller has to offer. Though downhill skateboarding has always been fun since Skate or Die for the Nintendo Entertainment System, I really didn't think the tricks and manuevers were that vital to the game. In fact, I think the best way to describe the game is a three-dimensional Skate or Die.
Now this isn't all bad, as the game still stands on its own. Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam provides an alternative to Nintendo's insane truck game, and the Wii's controller certainly has potential in this regard. I kind of wish the controller was kept in a pointer position, as the Wii controller is shaped like a skateboard to begin with (button 2 as crouch/jump feels a little too much like old-school NES and not a Wii title), but I'm sure the developers considered it before deciding to use the method. There were a lot of possibilities having the controller in the pointer position, but perhaps that will be for another day.
In some ways, I really wish they had not placed the Tony Hawk name on this game. I think it would work well without it. The name defines a certain type of game with free-roaming areas and a lot of potential for Wii remote possibilities. We don't know at this time if Activision plans on providing such stages, but it would really add a lot and extend the replay value if there were skateboard parks like previous games.
Graphically, I wasn't too impressed. I managed to jump off the stage at one point and fall down towards a lot of trees that didn't look like they were very detailed. In fact, I think it was a glitch because I kept boarding for a good 30 seconds before it threw me back on the track. The game may have a nice amount of immersion, but it isn't the cream of the crop. The details weren't bad by any means, but they could use a bit more textures.
Downhill Jam, on its own, could be a fun game. The demonstration didn't convince me that it will be a must-have game, but there's decent potential in what it could pull off. I'd really like to see a free-roaming environment to practice moves with the new controller. It's kind of disappointing to have something so new and fresh in your hands but not being able to use it. I really don't feel they've bothered to unlock even half of this controller's potential, which was fairly disappointing for a system that relies so much on innovative control.
