10. Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground
I don’t remember Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground. Before writing this list I had to look up some reviews and videos of the game. I played it, I know I did. But I can’t tell you anything about it. This would end up being the last Neversoft-developed THPS game. In a recent interview, Tony Hawk explained that after this game, Neversoft felt the desire to make more THPS games had died. The team was just done. It wasn’t fun anymore.
And Proving Ground feels like a studio trying to keep a corpse standing upright, with a mishmash of ideas and visuals. It feels gritty, but still plays like an arcade-y THPS game. And while Proving Ground has a closer camera angle, again trying to emulate Skate, it doesn’t feel like it was built with this closer angle in mind. It’s…not great. And a sad way for Neversoft to end its contributions to the franchise it started.
