Neversoft is preparing to release its eighth annual skateboarding game featuring the Tony Hawk name, appropriately entitled Tony Hawk's Project 8. Knowing full well that in recent years, the series has taken flak from long time Tony fans, the studio has heavily revamped the direction of the series, electing to spend more time on skating content and less on wacky stories and characters. With this plus an overhauled graphics engine for next-gen consoles, a new dual-stick trick system, and more, Project 8 is looking good. I recently got some hands on time with the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game, both in single-player and multiplayer.

The game is loaded up with approximately 200 separate goals, each of which has three skill levels: am (amateur), pro, and sick. Achieving the sick ranking on the goals is of course the most challenging. In a nice touch, the Xbox 360 version of the game features individual online leaderboards for most, if not all, of the game's goals, allowing you to see how you stack up to the world champions in a wide variety of Tony skills.