Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is a waste of time. The game doesn't even deserve the thought I would put into a catchy headline.

Being able to review video games for a newspaper is a pretty sweet gig. I mean, there is a lot I do as a writer and editor to put together a weekly newspaper, and it is always a lot of fun to go home, relax and play a video game, knowing I’ll get to write about all the fun I had in an upcoming video game review column.
It can be a lot of fun, unless there is a game like “Tony Hawk’s Downhill Jam” (THDJ) waiting to be reviewed. When I sat down to play THDJ I honestly felt like I was sitting in a dentist’s chair struggling to endure the pain.
You see, I love “Tony Hawk”-style skateboarding games, but this is nothing like other games of its ilk.
Probably due to the motion-based control scheme of the Wii, THDJ removes the free-form skate-anywhere aspect that all other “Tony Hawk” games have included and instead isolates the game into a downhill race on small, confined race courses.
Other professional skaters must not have wanted to see their likeness represented in this mockery of the sport because the only real-world skateboarder represented here is Tony Hawk. He’d have to be in it because his name is on the title, but to replace real, talented pros who have been replicated so well in other “Tony Hawk” games with generic characters is just a shame.
In THDJ, players pick a character. Then, they hold the Wii-mote controller sideways, similar to how ordinary video game controllers are held. Then, they must guide their skater downhill using buttons to swing punches at rival skaters and shaking the Wii-mote to make the skater shift into turbo-mode.
Pardon me while I snore.
There’s nothing new or exciting here at all. The game plays a lot like the years-old “SSX” titles but with smaller courses. The same tricks are here, too. As a skateboarder, you can grind rails, pop ollies and do some grab tricks on your board. These tricks make sense when applied to the snowboard themed “SSX” because there are only a few tricks that you can do when the board is strapped to your feet. And, snowboarding games need to be based on downhill courses because, well, that’s where the snow is, and that is where people actually go snowboarding.
But, in a skateboarding title, players should be allowed to treat their board like an instrument. So many real-life skateboarders can do incredible things with a skateboard. Just take a second and look up Rodney Mullen on the Internet. He’s a professional skateboarder that made a career out of doing flat-land tricks, as in tricks with no ramp or hill — just him and his board. This downhill aspect simplifies everything so much that the game turns into a lifeless, tedious sludge of colorful graphics and characters who speak in slang terms that someone in the video game developer’s board room must believe is “hip teenager lingo.”
The whole title seems like the developing company caught a case of “Let’s cash in on the new system” syndrome.
Overall, this game is a waste of time. It jettisons much of the charm and finesse of other “Tony Hawk” titles, and what is left is a watered down “snowboard-esque” game with little to redeem itself.
This isn’t the Tony Hawk I know, and don’t let his name on the box fool you into thinking that this game is anything other than a silly downhill racing game.
When Tony Hawk is back doing tricks and ripping up the courses with skill instead of speed, I’ll be back, ready to play. Until then, I’ll let this title collect dust while playing something else.