Hello Everyone :D This time, I will be talking about all the Extreme(Spelled Xtreme with a capital "X") Games that I played along the years.For most of us, Tony hawk defines Xtreme Games, and yeah, I am also included in that US, But there were other few games that were really good, So lets have a look at the past, present and future of Xtreme Video Games (As seen through my life , of course :P )
The Pre-Tony Hawk Era.
I started Gaming, when the only console we had was a ATARI 2600, now... at that time.. these "Xtreme Sports" were not that much of the "In Thing" the most extreme I can say... was the Teeter- Totter Game(Names Circus for some strange reason) where the other guys crashes into the hard ground if you miss him :P there was Skii-ng, but its not extreme unless there's an avalanche behind you.
Even in the NES era there were not many Xtreme games, And I don't remember playing any either . Same for the SNES, But Super Punchout was pretty Xtreme XD
Tony Hawk Cometh
(Not so Xtreme Before TH eh?)
*The Intro to TH
Then came PC gaming time, and it was in around 1999-2000 when I and my brother saw Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 Demo being shown as "Demo of the Week" on CNET's TV.com, the TV show that came in CNN (or was it BBC? don't remember exactly) After seeing that video with the character flying and going round and round in air we were excited very much! We wanted to play it very badly, so after a few months or so we got the demo (yeah, slow internet)
*The Demo that Started it all.
When we started the demo we were thinking of all those cool tricks we saw in the video.. and as soon as the game started... the controls were oh so awkward... we didn't even know how to go straight :lol: We tried a lot to play the game and reach those video levels of tricks.. but we were only in the baby-steps phase. There was a 2 min limit to the game but we could retry as much as we wanted :D at the end of the first day we were able to jump from ramps and do some grab tricks.
We wanted to do awesome tricks as in the video and hence played the demo almost everyday.. and within the same week... we went from 0 level to uber level :P now we could do awesome tricks and 360 Grab Tricks were NOTHING! We Always tried to beat the top score, and when one beat it.. the other would try to top it.. so we started playing Tony hawk like that.
NOW, we were totally addicted to tony hawk. There were so many tricks we could do and the place was also loaded with so many things to do tricks on, The concept of "GAP"s and going across them to increase the multiplier was so cool, also the different sound it gave when we cleared a gap and a different looking BLUE thing in our trick list while comboing, really added the feeling to have "more blues" in the score :P
There was no list of gaps or anything, we went on trying to cross any possible(and also tried the impossible:P) gaps, and also sometimes wanted to see if we could jump so high if we could go OUT of the locked place where we allowed to play.
All in all, this game really got us hooked, and the demo was very awesome! The thing is that we never bought the full game :( because you know.. at that game shops in our place were almost nonexistent.
*Spelled "Extreme" != Xtreme
But we did buy one game.. and it was Extreme Boards and Blade... and I have to tell you... WORST.Game.Ever. it was NOWHERE near tony hawk.. we only bought it because it was the only skateboarding game available (found it after a lot of searching) and I gave puppy faces(the expression that puss-in-boots gives in Shrek) to my parents to get that game! How sad I felt, that was the first game that we sold off/threw off or completely erased from memory (I don't even want to find out if its still there somewhere in the house.
After juicing out whatever we could from the THPS2 demo, we were left with emptiness inside, but this was only temporary as we got another demo soon! What was it you ask?
*Unbreakable Mirra on Bike
Dave Mirra's FreeS.tyle BMX! This game wanted us to have the latest directX 7 compatible GPU :o we at first were worried It wont run.. but it DID work and it was cool!!
Once again the first impressions were somewhat strange... we couldn't do things like in Tony Hawk.. the jumping was totally different in this.. and "can we grind using a bike?" we wondered, and the answer came soon, as we used our TH experience and tried out everything. The area was once again a small place, and it had many places to do tricks.. after a few test runs we started getting the rhythm of the game and started breaking records like longest slide, highest jump,highest score (obviously :P) This was a great Tony Hawk-ish experience we had. But once again.. never found the games on stores(during that time).
That was basically the last Xtreme game we played on the PC...coz after that we got the PSone! As I mentioned before, we played 3Xtreme too, it was like a Motorstorm of extreme games, with bikes, Skate boards,roller blades all facing off in one match.. oh and did I mention the ALIENSssss?
*THPS 3 Arrives!
After that came THPS 3!! Oh yeah! Thps3 for Psone (not PS2). At first sight we were like.. "ooh look at the awesome graphics!!" And" look at this controller how much easier it is to control the game now!" But you know.. it was like returning to ground 0 as it had been a long since we played the game and were back to being total N00bs.
But, This began something both I and my Bro remember as the Tony Hawk phase of our Life. Once we started playing the game.. it was months of Tony hawk for us! We never wanted to stop playing the game. We only progressed to the other level after completing each and every thing for one level. Yeah we became absolutists :P We had different saves for each player. My player was always Tony Hawk (coz you know, he is in the cover so, he is the best) and my bro always took "Kareem Cambell ".
Our day consisted of doing whatever we did, coming home and then playing tony hawk, that's all. My bro became like a Pro Grinder, you give him ANY surface he would grind though that place and increase the combo like anything. And I was the Grab Master :P I would grab whenever there was even an inch of gap between me and ground. And also Turn while grabbing.. even when I grinded and came down, I would do a grab trick :P. I would often tell my bro that grinding wont get you a high combo and he would do "In your face" by breaking my combo record :lol: then I top his and then him, and vice versa, it was like an infinite loop.
The game also had great BG music, the songs always circulated in a particular order and after playing the game for oh so many hours we got the order embedded into our minds :shock:, there would be a second of silence between two songs, but during that silence we would do crossfading type music making :lol:
Our scores were now always top, as we never crossed a level until we beat the highest score for that level, and doing the best we could for a heat level (not just finishing and going to next level) The game had 2 min time limit for everything we did, and that was the best part as it gave us a feel of tension and need to complete a thing on time!
*Xam ShmXam
My brother was soo immersed with the game that.. even when he had his internal Midterm exams in college, he played the game till late nights! Lol, that's the first instance that I can remember when anyone of us gave higher priority to games over studies :P I told him to stop play as he had exams, but the determined look in his eyes to complete the level showed that he wouldn't so I stopped trying.
We went on playing the game and now our one trick combos were greater than what our high scores were for the initial levels :D We used to look at old scores and laugh at ourselves :lol: But every phase has its end, after so many great adventures(Too many to mention) in the game we completed the game... the final level was as intense as any boss battle in any game we played, we were like "We have to use our skillz to the max" and Bazillion 2 min sessions were played trying to top the highest score and complete with all golds.
It felt like world has ended and there was nothing more to do.. as we had golds in everything, everything completed 100%, a new stage was unlocked after completing, we nailed that too :P We juiced out everything we could from THPS 3. After completing the game.. we just revisited old stages everynow and then to have fun and pass time.
Umm....Juuuuuuuice
*THPS 3 Again?
Afterwards we realized that there were many other versions of THPS 3 and got it for the PC, my bro didn't play it, but I completed that game too, it was pretty easy now(had a gamepad for PC), the only things different in the game were that there were people other than the skater in the game (the PSone version didn't have anyone else) and a few levels had extra things, and ofcourse, It looked better! The extra level in this was a ship loaded with swim suit models :P Maneuvering the camera to get the best shot was what I did in this level :lol:
*THPS4 = THPS3-Insanity
Later we bought THPS4 for PSone too, I don't remember much of it, other than it being goal oriented, There are a lot of levels in my memory, maybe some of them are from this (a big tree in the middle level, airport , know which they are from? ) Maybe some THPS3 memories are mixed with this too :P.A Few years passed and we bought a PS2, We bought THPS4 for it anyways and, once again the first reaction was "look at the GFX!" :P the game was almost same as before but we had to move here and there and get missions from other people(there were no people in Psone version)... somehow, it didn't feel all that great, I don't even remember if we completed that or left it like that.But there was one good thing.. it made us play THPS 3 once again (just a level or two :P )
After that THPS series went BOOM shaka laka for us.. Tony hawk underground came, and we were like "whaaaaat a STORY?" We are "NOT tony hawk? "OPEN WORLD?" Just played the game a bit, it was fun... but the open world concept didn't catch our attention. It totally removed the fun of THPS.
*Open Worlds Closed Appeal
In the old games the levels were small confined places, and we had to utilize the level as much as we could, to score, there was a limited number of things, and only our brain to think and combify. Whenever we discovered a small secret place in the levels, we were like "ZOMG! More combo possibilities!" Its good to have Open world in a game but I didn't see it working in THUG. Just think of it like the XBLA games and Games on Blu Ray, the XBLA game creators have more fun because their game should be fun and also fit into a small size, there is some kind of fun in that, where as when you have a 50 GB blu ray disc,you can make the game more expansive, HD, etc etc, but there that "fun" part is lost... this might seem not too much of a big deal, but in THUG, that open world concept was something I didn't like, everytime I see something tony hawk related , I go and play some THPS3 :P
Burnout Paradise is trying to bring the open world concept to something that shouldn't be of such type.. but if it clicks well(of which there is a good possibility), I hope tony hawk takes some pointers, I mean NFS :MW was basically open world but one could directly jump to blacklist and do things just like that, without having to go here and there just to start a mission(which is GREAT!). THPS4 was something like that, but THUG was not, Even the scores we get, didn't count unless we were in score missions. Better leave open world concept to GTA and others where it really is meaningful and cool.
Post TH Era
*Ystream?
Now let me list those other games that I played when I got "Xtreme" with everything :P
Razor's Frees.tyle Scooter : This game felt a bit like THPS as its trick system and button layout were quite similar, it had some interesting levels, and you could fall off buildings in it!!1! Completed that game too, it was quite interesting. Not groundbreaking or anything, but cool.
Pro Body Boarding : Seeing that we like Pro Skater so much, Father bought us this game thinking we would like this too. But sadly... this was Nothing like THPS (Surfing?!) and we shelved it permanetly after playing it once :?
SSX 3: Totally different, Very Cool (literally even :P ) first game I played with DTS support (awesome sound!) Fully deserves the 9.0 GS gave it.
Hmm....
*Latest Ventures
As for the Xtreme games that I have played recently, I only played the THP8 Demo on 360 and Skate Demo on PS3. THP8 demo was quite cool, it had the closed environment feel, although it didn't have that "heat" feeling, I went on doing tricks again and again, luckily the control layout was kept the same. That is the most played demo on my 360 :P and then Recently played Skate demo, it was cool and all. The graphics are great with that bloom effect on the characters taking full force. The controls were TOTALLY different, don't know if I can get accustomed to that.The camera angles were the best part, played for an hour or so (two times) it was interesting but, I am sure we can't do all those crazy stuff like in Tony hawk..
*Breaking some Bones
The game is trying to approach "Real Skating", The new way of controlling is cool and all but I like games that have that unreal feel in them, when games try to get too real, it just isn't a "video game" anymore. that's why I would prefer NFS/Ridge Racer over Forza/GT anyday :P Or even think of them as Second Life and WoW Almost same, but TOTALLY different, get it?
If the Level design of the next Tony Hawk is like the old days, also if (atleast) the MP modes have 2 min Time limits I MIGHT just get it, or else.. will skip it like every other tony hawk after THUG.
What about the future? God only knows :P maybe they will introduce special bone crunching controllers that will break your bones "LIKE REAL SKATING!!" :lol: Totally removing gamers from the scene and only "Real Skaters" will play em.
So, What do you think? Which was your Fav Xtreme Game, what do you think about the present Xtreme games? How do YOU want it to be? Comment away :D
And Here is a Totally Unrelated Video for you Viewing and Listening Pleasure :D
[video=KyQwlDD45b8LuTHX]
Player = Me.