Fanpoll: skate vs. Proving Ground
by Richard Mitchell 
{ Oct 16th 2007 at 6:30PM }
It's been a long time since we took a Fanpoll around here, and it's high time we start doing it again. What better way to start than to pit the video game skateboarding champ versus its newest rival? With the release of skate, many skateboarding fans have found themselves grinding right past Tony Hawk's Project 8. Well, Tony's back with Proving Ground, which just released today. So, here's our question to you, which game is better, Proving Ground or skate? Give us your feedback in the poll after the break. We'd prefer if you only answer once you've actually tried both games, but there's not exactly much we can do to stop you.
We'll share the results of the poll during the next episode of the Xbox 360 Fancast. Feel free to share the reasons for your vote in the comments. Also, we'd love suggestions for our next Fanpoll question.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Andre @ Oct 16th 2007 6:34PM
Skate FTW.
Piers Beaumont @ Oct 16th 2007 6:40PM
Skating, come on, this is so late 90's, couldnt care less.
Tony @ Oct 16th 2007 6:41PM
Based on the demos, skate tramples all over TH.
Josh @ Oct 16th 2007 6:48PM
i'm not going to vote as i haven't played full versions of either game, but skate seems gimmicky to me. the control schemes are interesting, but they didn't translate into fun - IMO
and tony hawk has gone downhill in recent iterations, so i can only hope it's gotten good/better again.. but who knows
Jon @ Oct 16th 2007 6:49PM
@ Piers Beaumont,
War games, that's so 2000BC
Sports games, that's so 1900s
Driving games, that's so 1908
Please, because people did it in the 90's, its no longer fun?
dkkev @ Oct 16th 2007 6:52PM
definitely Skate.. solely based on the demos.
however - the last few tony hawk games... - actually since #3 - its gone downhill.. and not in a good way imo.
TheKillerGreen @ Oct 16th 2007 7:02PM
For those who have only tried the skate demo, I would recommend you check-out the full thing. IMO it's a lot better than Tony Hawk because you feel like your actually accomplishing something when you pull off cool tricks and find new areas. I've skated around the whole city just looking for cool areas to setup jumps and grind combinations. The replay editor is really nicely done too.
Anthology @ Oct 16th 2007 7:37PM
I played both demos and gave them both a chance. Ive bought every tony hawk game since the first to project 8. But Skate is just better. I didnt like the THPG demo at all. In fact i didnt even like it as much as P8. It felt more like american wasteland. The skaters knees dont even bend when the land a big jump. WTF? Skate wins!
omghi2umastercheiflolzcopter @ Oct 16th 2007 7:41PM
Skate all the way...although you can't really compare the two games simply because they involve skateboarding. Reviews for Madden games don't and shouldn't draw comparisons to the latest iteration of NFL Blitz. These parrallels can't be drawn for the simple fact that although they are both games based on the same sport each is different type of game; Madden is a more or less a sim, Blitz is an arcade style game. Madden focuses on the core elements of football play book manuevers and timing where Blitz is all about powerups, turbo and other unrealistic, altough entertaining elements.
The same goes for the Skate vs. Hawk issue. Skate, while it does borrow a few cups of sugar from Hawk in terms of mission types (i.e. score x amount of points in y minutes, line/combo missions etc.), approaches skating as a whole from the angle of a sim. Its gameplay is technical at heart with a focus on physics (albiet a wonky engine for physics, for a first iteration of a series it holds its own just fine); timing, speed, height of ollie etc are driving forces behind pulling off lines. Hawk's approach to gameplay is more of an arade style; simple, button based commands which yield astronomically high points if you can master the "nail the trick" minigame and revert into a manual after a bowl trick. Grinding a rollercoaster or around an entire city for 20 minutes straight are also elements which land this game in the realm of arcade games.
Basically the issue boils down to whether you prefer arcade or sim style games. If you're more into games which attempt to approach an experience from a more realistic angle then you're more apt to dig skate (if skating games are your thing, which they probably are if you're reading the comments for this post). You like the idea of riding on rollercoasters with a skateboard or defying gravity and physics in general? Hawk it up then.
Personally i dig skate because the sim approach brings a new element to a genre that has been dominated by the arcade style since the days of Skate or die and 720 degrees. Skate is a fresh and genuinely enjoyable experience and a welcome diversion from the tried and true arcade ways of the tony hawk series.
UNSCleric @ Oct 16th 2007 7:42PM
Skate is terrible, and there's no way in hell you should be supporting EA as a gamer.
Fox318 @ Oct 16th 2007 7:42PM
After playing both...skate.
THPS should have gone EXTREAMLY arcady/crazy.
I mean like jumping over planets with a dog with 76 legs and singing Journey songs.
dynamik123 @ Oct 16th 2007 7:47PM
Proving Ground, because TH games allow you to do stuff I could never even get close to doing IRL, and instead of playing Skate, I will actually go out and skate with a REAL SKATEBOARD, and nail that kickflip with real people around me.
Gemini Ace @ Oct 16th 2007 7:48PM
Skate! Tony Hawk needs to retire from the gaming biz.
DemonGSides @ Oct 16th 2007 7:49PM
That is pretty extreme
OTAM @ Oct 16th 2007 8:04PM
Skate is where it's at. Tony Hawk's skateboarding isnt even skateboarding anymore,it's just Jackass the video game (with skateboard).
Skate FTW.
Edog Lost @ Oct 16th 2007 8:10PM
Tony Hawk jumped the shark with the underground series. Their attempts to make the game more appealing to a younger audience split their core followers. They tried to win old school Tony fans back with Project 8, but it was too little too late.
I agree with post one, SKATE FTW.
I hope to see more. Although Skate was a new IP, it had too many game play issues that angered me. Things that the Tony series solved over the years.
Randy @ Oct 16th 2007 8:35PM
I love skating and love skate games. EA's Skate is excellent! Controls are so cool. Now if I could only get back to it. Damn Halo 3. Want Orange Box too and COD4 is around the corner. Damn gaming industry.
Service_Games @ Oct 16th 2007 8:46PM
Proving Ground is for Tony Hawk fans, skate. is for skaters. I favor the latter. I think the TH series has been doing nothing but going downhill since 2x anyway.
SG
Destroyer88 @ Oct 16th 2007 8:52PM
Skate by a landslide.
Paul @ Oct 16th 2007 8:58PM
Omg there is no competition between skate and TH if you think TH is good take a sword and kill yourself cause something is wrong with you.
I AM NOT KIDDING
Carl @ Oct 16th 2007 8:59PM
skate all the way
DEMAN @ Oct 16th 2007 9:50PM
skate flickit is funs good missions also u can show people videos of yourplayer doing that trick u spent forever mastering well when u werent playing halo 3
LFotF @ Oct 16th 2007 10:19PM
I have only played the demos for both games, but I VASTLY prefer Tony Hawk. Maybe I just need to play skate longer to get used to the new control scheme, but I probably won't until I buy and get bored of Proving Ground.
fretster @ Oct 16th 2007 10:29PM
I haven't played skate or the new Tony yet, but I haven't had nearly as much fun with ANY recent iteration of Tony Hawk since THPS 2.
ANt @ Oct 16th 2007 10:41PM
I played both and I own Skate. It's awesome, period. And huge too!!
Marcelo @ Oct 16th 2007 10:48PM
This is old fashioned! Does skates even exist nowadays? lol
Marcelo
http://tatoo-tutorial.marcelo7300.com.ar/
Dragod @ Oct 16th 2007 11:32PM
Tony Hawk's Underground 2, all the way!
I played the Proving Ground demo and I was disgusted at the controls.
ogvor @ Oct 17th 2007 12:04AM
I'm gald skate is smashing Tony Hawk. This shows how important it is to INNOVATE! Skate was good enough to get someone to buy it (me) who never bought one Tony Hawk game. And I've never even skateboarded in my entire life. The game is jsut plain fun, and for those who haven't played Tony Hawk games, the controls are really easy to learn and incredibly intutive and as I have mentioned before, they are fun to use.
Zach01 @ Oct 17th 2007 1:09AM
skate is an awesome game. it takes a little while to get used to the controls, but once u do it is sooooo fun! i could play for hours just setting up lines and trying to nail certain tricks
Proteus28 @ Oct 17th 2007 1:24AM
@ #15 Exactly! It does feel like Jackass with skateboards.
Not to mention the physics of the Tony Hawk games really bug me. I know that isn't a problem for some people, seeing as how it's just a video game.
Skate ftw
benyaimin @ Oct 17th 2007 7:18AM
next poll- do you play halo 3?
lets see how lopsided that one is
outforprophets @ Oct 17th 2007 7:29AM
skate, and I'm a HUGE Tony Hawk fan. Well, was.
When the demo for skate hit XBLA I couldn't put it down. When the demo for THPG came out, I forced myself to play through it.
Adam @ Oct 17th 2007 9:05AM
im stopping myself from voting due to me not having played proving ground yet, but im about 400% sure i'd still vote for skate if/when i do. whoever said skate was 'gimicky' obviously hasn't played hawks since... well ever!
i think what should be pointed out (and a few people have touched on it already) is that skate is (presumably) the first in a series, TH1 was flawed in far too many places to point out but these were addressed in later installments. once we get to skate 2/3 i think it will be unstoppable.
Stan @ Oct 19th 2007 7:46AM
Meh. Skate is so overrated piece of crap. So freakin' boring. >.> Not fan of Tony Hawk either, but it's always much more fun to do ridiculous and impossible combos like crazy than lame kickflips.
Kelly @ Oct 17th 2007 9:10AM
definitely still a devoted tony hawk fan.
yes, the series may have gone downhill from previous versions, but i still love it.
and the skate controls may be innovative and unique, but i find them far too tedious for the game to be any fun. you need to be perfectly lined up to a rail in order to grind it? that's just annoying. yeah that makes it more realistic, but that doesn't mean it's fun. just like guitar hero would not be fun if they made it play more like a real guitar.
DjDATZ @ Oct 17th 2007 9:20AM
based on what everyone's saying...skate.
But then again...I've hated every TH game that was made after THUG 2...because they've become unnecessarily complicated. Why can't it be the button mashing goodness from 5-10 years ago? :(
I'm Cool @ Oct 17th 2007 9:21AM
Is this a serious question? I don't even think there are any Tony Hawk fans left after the Skate DEMO came out. Every game has been a rehash of the last one "ohnoes my skateboard fell apart and theres one piece somehow on the roof of each one of these skyscrapers. Do 90 backflips off this curb and onto the roof and get the pieces plzthnksbai".
Skate > THPG
Lyon @ Oct 19th 2007 5:08AM
Skate!
The skating genre need a kick up the buttocks, and skate provided that wake up call!
Don't need to play THPG, played all the old ones! ;)
russtophiles @ Oct 17th 2007 10:02AM
I think the reason Skate is so engrossing is because it allows a sort of convincing escapism. Playing the game you feel like you've actually skated and not just completed a list of objectives to progress in the game. The physics centric nature of the game lends a much more intimate, natural, and tangible interaction with the environment, which I think is one of the most alluring aspects of real skating to begin with.
Even though it's not as feature rich as Proving Ground, the core game itself is new, different, and reminiscent of the unsuccessful Tony Hawk competitor game Thrasher for the PS1, which was a more realistic game (to a fault) at a time when people probably weren't ready for that level of simulation.
Skate's 'back to basics' approach works because the basics feel so right, unlike Tony Hawk where your skater feels like a stiff robot riding a wheeled rocket that's capable of flying faster than a ferrari. Skate's slower pace not only adds realism but encourages you to savor the details that went into the visuals and the excellent level design. Skate's laid back attitude also makes playing the game a relaxing, zen-like experience rather than the wacky task list/token collecting of the TH games (which can also be fun, but after almost 10 games.....)
I suspect the TH team will be doing some deep thinking after seeing the sales figures compared to their new competition. Proving Ground is a step in the right direction, offering more diversity on HOW you play the game (particularly merging the level editor into the single player with the clever 'rigger' class) but the core game just feels like every other TH game with high poly characters and overexagerrated highlights. I think TH should take a different direction entirely than Skate, since I see little point in them trying to continue trying to obtain 'street cred' like with Proving Ground. Maybe they should try adding those off road earth boards to the game and have environments outside of the city? Something that NO skateboard game has done yet and still allows for plenty of craziness. It may be a stretch for the Tony Hawk branding, but at this point they've been beat at their own game, so they need to change the game significantly.
Taoski @ Oct 17th 2007 10:09AM
Its down to personal choice.
Either you like a well rounded skate sim with a few rough edges and missing (IMO) features...
Or Ollie-The-Bum...
Dude Hoss @ Oct 17th 2007 11:03AM
Skate hands down, and that comes from a history of playing and owning every Tony Hawk game thus far. It is such a different approach, and for the better. Rather than it be about getting 99999999999 points in one combo or getting some objects while running from dock workers(honestly it doesn't get much gimicky than that) it is about skating. The ride. I played the demo endlessly and now that I have the full game it is so easy to just pop it in, ride around, and do some cool stuff. Points don't even matter to me. Free skate, shut the HUD off, and then just ride. Don't know if you just did a uber cool trick? Well you do, when you get a multiplier the colors get bright and intense letting you know you are badass. This brightness is even more intense when you are high. Not that I condone that behavior, it's not for everyone, but Skate is surely in the top 5 games to play when high, as my roommate and I will attest to.
The only this this tony hawk has going for it is that it is the same old crap. Some people love it, and by some I mean a minority as the poll shows. Some people don't want to change their aybxybyxabyxrrr ways claiming the skate controls are hard to learn. No way, intuitive as it gets. You gotta try harder or just get better at games, cause your failing on one of those.
In the end, Skate > Tony Hawk any day anywhere.
Jared @ Oct 17th 2007 1:06PM
@ 28: You DO realize the irony of emphatically stating "the importance of innovation" and having an EA game in the same breath where you're NOT putting down EA for not being innovative...RIGHT?
that aside, as a long-time Tony player, the subsequent sequels have gotten stale, and I'm playing the SHIT outta "Skate".
eurotransient @ Oct 17th 2007 1:15PM
I'm definitely with #34 above. I'm not going to vote in the poll on account of not having played skate beyond the demo, but I do still love my TH games. The only ones that didn't really do anything for me were THUG1 and THAW; everything else has been very fun.
That said, I would agree that there is an element of laziness to newer TH games, where it really does feel like more of the same. Still, the fact of the matter is that I don't want a realistic skateboarding sim. I agree that skate is pretty innovative, but ultimately I found myself more frustrated by the demo than engaged. I'll give skate a more thorough look when it drops in price, and I'm definitely curious to see how it evolves in future editions, but I'll stick to my wacky physics, crazy jumps and Christ Airs for now.
x cram x @ Oct 17th 2007 9:08PM
Please retire Tony. Should have 2 releases ago.
kk @ Oct 18th 2007 4:35AM
is it true that in proving ground, if you slam n break ur nose then it will be stuffed up for the rest of the game?
ak @ Oct 18th 2007 4:44AM
In my mind, the best hawk games were pro skater 2 on ps1 and underground 1 on ps2. underground 2 was like a carnival or something and i though it was pretty stupid, plus they screwed up the aussie accent making an aboriginal sound like a pom. american wasteland was so so and i dont mind project 8 but i havent even got half way and i havent played it for months. i think skate will be a fresh change from all the hawk games.
Kyle @ Oct 21st 2007 6:43PM
Hello, I am a 'EA CREATOR'. Tony Hawk games are good but it seems once you have played them for a long time it just gets boring and non-enjoyable. I think you agree with me because button hitting over and over again and to do a extremely hard trick by pressing a simple button is not the way to keep gamers happy. 'Skate' takes a completly new approach because this time to do a trick you get a sense of acomplishment for, now to do a '360 KICKFLIP' on a ramp will take skill. Anolog controls are introduced. The left anolog stick to control the body and the right one to contol the board and by this I mean trick wise. So get ready for some serious skateboarding! So please give me your comments.
Kyle @ Oct 21st 2007 6:48PM
Ok I am not an 'EA CREATER' as I said before. I was just joking about that to get a laugh but guys tell me what you think about the competition between those games.
Zach @ Nov 11th 2007 11:27AM
I think over the years Tony Hawks had some good games, but now there just not competiting with current games. Example, for ps2, the graphics have been the same since what....Pro Skater 4. IMO i think that Skate is just better in so many ways. Graphics, realisticness, and storyline. If your a real skater you wouldn't want to be able to ollie 30 feet in the air and have a so called special meter and do "special" tricks......EA Skate=Sickest skate game ever.....THPG=Retire, Please!
forde @ Nov 24th 2007 1:53PM
Skate has a better story, it's longer and more challenging, i hate the nail the grab like you can jump off a building and land in a manual skate batters thpg all over exept tony hawks has a better skate list but i hate the ''unlocked'' characters...... i was really really dissapointed at this new tony hawks and i wanted it soo bad, completing it in 6 hours it stupid SKATE is better 100%