Holding the skateboard peripheral for Tony Hawk: Ride in your hand is somewhat surprising: it's a very light piece of equipment. It's the exact shape and size of a real skateboard, with lips on both the front and back. The hardware Activision is using for demos are the prototypes; the real peripheral will have some more color and graphics, so the only difference between the production models and what we're playing with at E3 are cosmetic.
Executive Producer Scott Krager walks me through the finer points of the hardware. The board has sensors on each side as well as the front and back. That means to go forward you actually put your foot down and slide it across the floor as if you were trying to gain speed on a real skateboard. It's packed with accelerometers, and will detect rotation, pitch, and roll with remarkable accuracy. Soon we've exhausted conversation on the peripheral; it's time to play.
It's surprising that we're not asked to take off our shoes before we hop on the board, but the EA employee giving me the demo is clear: you don't have to be gentle with the equipment. He slams his foot on the end of the board next to mine, sending it spinning in the air before hitting the ground. He shrugs, and the signal is clear... it's OK to be rough.
In the first demo I have to manual?or balance on the rear wheels?for fifty feet. This requires the player to lean back on the board, causing the front to rise up from the ground. Balance is tricky, and I instinctively bring my arms up to held stay in this position. To ollie?or jump with all the wheels off the ground?you have to lean back quickly to bring the front up and back down. I try this and land on a rail, balancing my grind by leaning back and forth.
I can't help but grin at this stage; this is amazing fun. I lean right and left to steer, and notice the muscles in my legs tighten up. This could be quite the workout in long sessions.
Next we try some vert (vertical) skating, and I adjust my stance accordingly; I'm told that I ride goofy-foot, leading with my left leg. I gather my speed and slam on the back of the board, sending my character high into the air. I then pivot on the back of the board, and my character does a spin trick. I reach down and touch the side of the board, and my character does a grip trick. It's somewhat tricky to learn where your hands need to go to trigger the sensors, but very soon I'm nailing tricks with the board, sliding and leaning and grabbing and having a great time.
The crowd gathered around the demo area looked skeptical, and I don't blame them. Until E3, I considered the skateboard peripheral to be an expensive gimmick, the last gasp of a dying franchise. This is something you have to play to understand, and I walked away from my demo very, very happy with the hardware and what it adds to the game. It will be fun to play the full version and master the tricks and intricacies of the game, but even the 20 minutes I was able to spend with the game gave me a deep appreciation of the control method.
On the way out, a lady grabbed me to complete a survey on the demo, a sort of focus test to make sure people were getting everything they needed to from the demos. "Would you say the demo made you more likely to buy the game, it didn't change your opinion, or it made you less likely to buy?" she asked.
"More likely to buy," I told her. Tony Hawk: Ride is going to have a rough challenge at retail with a high price point and a controller that's hard to understand from pictures, but once they get their feet on it, I think gamers are going to be very impressed.
