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What about BMX? It's fantastic, well thought out, fun, and THAW would have been better off without it. 90% of the BMX missions are very simple tutorials, making them the easiest part of a game that's already way too damn easy. They become really old really fast, and the few story missions that need to be done on a bike are only difficult because it's hard to remember how to pull off the tricks they ask for. For some reason only the most basic BMX moves are listed in the manual, and it's not always clear in the game what exactly they're asking for. This might have made a great basis for a separate game, which no one would buy considering the death of Activision's own Matt Hoffman series, but in THAW it's just a distraction from the real meat of the game.
By this of course I mean tossing water balloons at people.
The hardest mission in THAW for me was when I had to shoot water balloons at a construction worked climbing up a ladder, for reasons just as stupid as you can imagine. You have to hit him 32 times by rapidly tapping the X button while gradually pushing down. If you accidentally tap in any other direction your aim will be off and you'll have to start over. If you fail to tap down at the right time, you won't keep a bead on him, and you'll have to start over. If a crate happens to pass between you and him while you're shooting, which is something you have no control over...guess what? Start over. And each time you start over, you'll have to see the unskippable cut-scenes before it, just like you'll have to do for any other mission you fail. There are two other water balloon missions in the game, and yeah they suck too.
The rest of the game is as easy as your pigmy skater/gurl guide, Mindy. The only differences I've found in the three difficulty levels is that the lower the difficulty, the less missions you'll have to finish in order to progress with the story, but the times, tasks, and scores you'll need to hit seem to be identical (no way am I going to finish this game three times just to be sure). So unlike THUG1, there's no reason to take another spin through the game at a different skill level unless you're super hard up for secret skaters (which are super lame this time btw). I can't even imagine someone who has never touched a Tony Hawk game before having any trouble at all even on Sick until the very end where the missions begin to get difficult, but any vet is just going to breeze on by them.
Classic mode returns, but it's less than half as many levels than THUG2; and the main mode is just too easy to keep anyone's interest for too long. It took me a half hour to unlock the pitiful selection of levels, which had tougher challenges in the games they originally appeared in. You'll get two more levels if you bought the collector's edition...but of course there's no such thing for Xbox owners. Sure, you can use newer tricks in them, but since these levels weren't designed with them in mind it feels pointless. I'd rather dust off my THPS collection and replay them in their original context. Oh, in case you're wondering the only difference between normal and sick here is the point challenges are higher, yet still well within the means of a casual THPS fan thanks to timer abuse (if the clock hits zero while in mid-combo, you can just keep going for as long as you can hold your balance).
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