Tonk Hawk's Downhill Jam

Did they come up with a decent way to play Wii?

	Version Wii, DS, GBA	Developer Toys for Bob	Publisher Activision	Genre Action

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By Ian Dransfield

Activision decided to take responsibility for the first Tony Hawk's game on the Wii away from Neversoft, and hand it over to Toys For Bob - makers of Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure. Well, there's some logic in there at least. After playing Tonk Hawk's Downhill Jam though, I can't help but wonder if (hope) that Neversoft are secretly beavering away at a Wii Hawk game from the main franchise. What we have here is... hollow. Nothing much else.

Downhill Jam takes the basic premise of the original Tony Hawk games - tricks and scoring - and throws it into a new arena - super fast downhill races. It's an interesting idea, but frankly this dry land way of doing things is immediately shown up by the vastly superior SSX series. Let's look at this objectively though, as there isn't yet an SSX game on the Wii - for those who solely own a Wii and no other console (all none of you); Downhill Jam is a decent enough game. It is in no way worth the full-price tag though.

The bane of developer's lives must come in the shape of the Wii control scheme - how do the more 'normal' games take advantage of the Wiimote without it seeming shoehorned in or merely a gimmick? Sports, Play and Wario Ware are the only ones that seem to have pulled this off so far, and poor Tony's lot doesn't do a great deal to convince me otherwise - steering is handled by holding the Wiimote horizontally and steering it, same as in Excite Truck.

Shaking makes characters get up when knocked down, as well as activating boost. It's functional and inoffensive at best, pointless and crowbarred in at worst - that's certainly up to the individual.

The game offers a few game modes - straight forward races, one-on-ones, slaloms, trick attacks, destruction and knock down pedestrians, as well as maybe some others that have slipped my Lemsip-addled brain right now. They're all pretty standard fare and none of the modes stray far from the template laid down by the normal race mode - start at the top of a hill, race down quite fast, get confused as to what direction you're meant to be heading, finish 0.32 seconds/points behind the computer. Simple.

As a result it comes across as false variation - you're basically doing the same thing over and over, event after event for hours on end. If you can be bothered to put that much effort in to it, mind.

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Video Coverage (See Latest Videos & Video FAQ Here)
PLEASE DO NOT DIRECT LINK TO ANY MEDIA FILE ON KIKIZO
Description	Dur.	Size	Details
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam Wii game demonstration (normal quality)	3:20	35MB	DF, SD, 4:3 480x360p30 1.5Mbps
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam Direct feed trailer   (Wii - Activision)	01:29	14MB	DF, SD, 4:3 640x480p30 1.3Mbps