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TONY HAWK’S DOWNHILL JAM
Wed, 1st Nov 2006
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Grab your deck and drop into the extreme speed of downhill racing in Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam. A step away from the traditional Tony Hawk games, Downhill Jam brings you high-speed races down the steepest hills in the world - from the rocky terrain of Machu Picchu to the streets of San Francisco, and other unique settings including Hong Kong, Edinburgh and Rio de Janeiro. Sparks, gravel and dust fly as you shred downwards at neck-breaking speeds and all the while tilting and twisting your Wii controller just to stay on track. The visuals in Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam are clean, with a respectable amount of detail. For those keeping score, the graphics are certainly an improvement over what you’d see on the GameCube, although they’re a subtle testament to the Wii’s graphics power. The environments are large and contain a good amount of activity from vehicles and pedestrians. We saw a decent number of different special effects used for speed bursts and point modifiers that added some flash, which was a good complement to the action. The game also moves along at a smooth and stablerate with a great sense of speed (which obviously is vital to the enjoyment of the game). Definitely a lot of fun in multiplayer as you try and speed past or bash your friends, dodging traffic and jumping gaping canyons (thanks to the Wii remotes you can literally rip up your living room in the process too).