I was only about ten when I got my first skateboard. It had a picture of a shark on the reverse, it had luminous green wheels and it was perfect for me, back in the day. My shark board's time under my feet was short lived though - after falling off and grazing both knees and both hands, I never wanted to ride it again! It was good fun too, for the first five seconds, going down the driveway slope, shouting "I'm doing it, I'm doing it!" before going rear over face and getting hurt pretty bad! We ended up burning that board the following Bonfire Night, in tribute to my tragic fall.

If Tony Hawk had burnt his board when he first took a tumble, we wouldn't be playing the eighth game in his series on the fabulous Xbox 360 today. Tony Hawks Project 8 has a pretty lame story - our man Tony is looking for the top eight skaters in town for his new venture, and you, as a created skater, have to work your way up through the ranks to get into that top eight category. This is no easy task either, considering that you start off at rank 200! Haven't we come a long way from the first Tony Hawk's game?

Project 8 is the first Tony Hawk game to be built from ground up for the Xbox 360 and PS3 - American Wasteland wasn't a true next generation title. If you were to build your house from the ground up, would you make changes? Yes, you probably would. Neversoft have done just that, because Project 8 truly feels like a brand new skating game, sporting all the familiarities and home comforts that the previous Tony Hawk games have had, but with plenty of differences too.

The first big difference is the graphics, which this time are in true high definition. Your skater has never looked so realistic, and neither have all the other skaters that ride around the beautifully designed town that Tony is sourcing talent from. You start off in a small area of the town, but as you progress and move up the ranks, more and more sections open up to you, more luscious sights and visuals, water fountains that trickle into a beautiful crevasse - and I have to say, I wouldn't have thought that graphics would be on the top priority list with the developers when looking at a skating game, but anybody with that frame of mind should actually take a look at the water effects in this game. It makes tearing up those rails that run through water features a visual treat, that's for sure.

As with many of its predecessors, the main part of Project 8 is based around a career mode. However, this time Neversoft have embarked upon a quest to satisfy those players that still prefer the old style achieving goals in a set time mechanic to the recent career incarnations. Project 8 is home to many styles of challenge, but the one that will particularly whet the old school whistle are the chalk challenges. There are seemingly hundreds of these dotted around town and they're marked with chalk, surprisingly enough!

Fire hydrants might be marked with chalk and this particular challenge might want you to Nata Spin so many times on fire hydrants in one combo. All chalk challenges seamlessly integrate into the free-roaming gameplay; you never really have to break off and read information, it's just a case of seeing some florescent chalk (that looks more like spray paint actually) and go for gold. On a pavement you might see a chalk challenge to grind along it, so you start and the next chalk mark is further down the line - get to that mark and you've just achieved an amateur award for that challenge, but look - further down the pavement lie two more marks, one gives you the pro status and the one after that gives you the ultimate status of being 'sick'! With these challenges you only have to do what you can handle, but they do make you come back to try and get to the next skill level or the next mark. Achieving sick status is extremely hard, so you'll really have to brush up on those skating skills to push the boundaries. I really feel that these chalk challenges are the best feature of the game - they appeal to us folk who thought goal after goal gameplay found in the first wave of Tony Hawk's games was better than career gameplay found in more recent ones. In Project 8 you have hundreds of varied challenges with three different difficulties to aim for - and I love it.

Of course, in the career mode you're going to get your silly challenges from people in the town, such as jumping over golf holes to help Dad practise with his golf. This seems pointless and isn't a lot of fun at all, but then, on the other hand, when you've got more serious challenges from Pro Skaters that you meet along the way, you start to have a lot more fun - showing off is what Tony Hawk's has always been about, so showing off to pro personalities, showing that you can do these tricks and land them properly, then getting rewarded for your efforts, is a great skate feeling.

Moving up the ranks in Project 8 isn't easy - but you'll get there eventually if you skate hard. Chalk challenges are a good way to increase your rank, as is finding gaps - for those who don't know, gaps are small hidden areas that, when you skate on or over them, give you a gap point. Skating in one style increases your stats for that skill, so if you do a lot of grinding then expect to advance in grinding faster than you would spinning, for example. Building your stats is crucial if you are to participate in some of the later goals to help you move up the ranks even further, and increasing stats isn't as easy as it was in previous Hawks games; you have to do your fair share of air tricks to get an air point and it really makes you feel as if you've worked for your stats when you eventually go up a notch.

Another way of getting noticed is to get a sponsor, and once a company wants to sponsor you, expect to take part in things like commercial videos and crowd pleasing events, where you have to, well, please the crowd or risk your reputation! The crowd pleasing events are actually great fun, as the crowds are usually split up, so when you're doing your show you have to skate in a variety of ways in different areas marked by the different crowds - so multitasking to maintain crowd happiness is a lot of good fun in the form of immense pressure!

Project 8 actually loses some tricks from previous games and the whole trick system feels more streamlined - less nonsense, more good, clean skating. This is a good thing, because losing some of the old unnecessary tricks has made way for a whole new trick system called Nail The Trick. By pushing in on both thumbsticks the camera focuses on your feet and the game goes into slow motion. The left thumbstick now controls your left foot and the right stick controls the right foot. Say you've just ollied off a ramp and mid air you go into Nail The Trick mode. By holding up on the right foot stick you kick your board so it spins around vertically - the longer you hold the direction, the longer the board continues to spin. Getting back on your board from here is easy and you can use your eyes and ears to help you get back on. When you see the grip tape on your board line up with your feet it's time to release, and you jump back on your board before the game comes out of slow motion. If you listen out, you can also faintly hear the grip tape lining up with your feet at every cycle. However, the fun doesn't just end with one spinning trick, because if you line your feet up with the bottom of the board instead of the top where the grip-tape can be found and then quickly use another foot in another direction, you can change the trick and rack up even bigger scores. If you can get four or five different tricks in there, making your board go left and right, up and down, in every direction possible, not only does it look great but you'll achieve some pretty sick scores too!

Aside from sound effects that help you line up your board, you've got your usual voice acting from all the Pro Skaters that roam around your town, as well as some "totally cool" Tony Hawk vocal talent in there as well. Skater's paradise in the form of voicing then, but the music is just as appealing to that stereotypical skater dude, with lots of indie artists and a few renowned ones too, all doing their bit to keep skating around more interesting. Finally, all the other sound effects you would expect, for grinding, jumping and flipping and even knocking people down, are all crisp and convincing, just as you'd expect. Previous Tony Hawk's games have let you knock people down, but in Project 8 they get mad if you keep interrupting their skating shenanigans! Making someone angry results in them coming after you, shaking their fists, and hey, if they manage to catch you, they'll punch you and push you to the ground. Not what you want if you're trying to do a manual combo!

Unfortunately, there are a few things that get in the way of making this game perfect. While you have free skate modes and offline multiplayer, as well as support for eight players online with leaderboards too, I cannot help feeling a little empty. I think it's the fact that Project 8 only supports two people offline and I would really have preferred four players - you cannot tell me that a mode like HORSE (where people take turns in getting high scores to spell a word) is too demanding to support four bodies. While this might sound trivial, Project 8 excludes itself from those games to have on a party list when it could have easily been on the top. Another thing that annoys is the inconsistent frame rate - yes the graphics look top notch, but with great graphics comes great responsibility on the programmers' part, because when things get a little fast and you're taking corners while doing tricks, you can get some horrendous slowdown that really does upset the flow of play (and is pretty inexcusable on a machine of the 360's abilities).

Tony Hawks Project 8 is a strong follow up to American Wasteland and the series has managed to stay fresh, even after all this time, with new additions to satisfy hardcore fans and enough changes to warrant old school skaters coming back, wanting to get the most out of this part-reinvented genre. Niggles aside, Project 8 should be on your Christmas list this year, because you won't find a more charming extreme sports game on your 360 with as much replay value at this moment in time! So how does an 8 sound, Tony? A Project 8!

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).