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ZM...+M..M8.$M...MM.ZMZ..~M.... ......?M....NN...OM..MI.....7MN7.......MN....:M. ZM...+M..M8.?M...:M.$MMMMMM~... ......?M....NN...OM..MN.....7M.M8......,M,...:M..$M..I+M..M8.:M..,:M..M......... ......?M....NN...+M...MMNMM.$M..MM.......MMMNMM...MMNM+M..M8..MMNMDM...MM$IM.... ........................ ........ ......... .................... ............... ................................................................................ Table of Contents -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Copyright/Legal Information [CI] 2. Intro [IN] 3. Basic Tips [BT] 4. Standing on the Board [SB] 5. (N)Ollie [ON] 6. Tilt Tricks [TT] 7. Flick Tricks [FT] 8. Grabs [GB] 9. Spine Transfers [ST] 10. Manuals [MN] 11. (N)Ollie Setup [OS] 11.1. Advanced Flip Tricks [AF] 11.2. Advanced Grab Tricks [AG] 12. Grinds [GR] 13. Flat Land Tricks [FL] 14. Trick Transitions [TR] 15. Inverts/Stalls [IS] 16. Vert [VR] 17. Special [SP] 18. Tips and Tricks/Troubleshooting [TP] 19. Conclusion [CL] [1] Copyright/Legal Information [CI] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ascii Art made coutesy of GlassGiant.com Tony Hawk Ride Logo and all rights associated with it are property of Activision Guitar Hero and all rights associated with it are property of Activision Rock Band and all rights associated with it are property of Harmonix Top Skater and all rights associated with it are Property of Sega Eddie from Tekken 3 and all rights associated with that character are property of Namco Bleep Bloop and all rights associated with that are property of CollegeHumor.com This Guide is copywritten for Kevin Cronin, the author: Copyright Kevin Cronin 2009 This guide can only be used or displayed with the written consent of Kevin Cronin and all other copies and distributions are illegal. This guide can be used and displayed on: GameFAQs.com, DigitPress.com Contact Information for author: segaages.dp @ gmail(dot)com [2] Intro [IN] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To start, this guide was originally written within the span of a couple message board posts and has now been expanded to be put on to GameFAQs. Whether people love this game or not, I noticed that most people, like myself, would get this game or try this game, and everything seemed completely unresponsive. The tricks seemed to happen randomly. I also noticed that I am probably one of the few people that have purchased this game and taken the time to learn the way everything works enough to write a guide on how to do tricks. Countless google searches really bring up no results. In this tutorial, I am also going to talk about some of the other tricks you can do that even the tutorial videos do not explain. I will stress that every person that even tries this game needs to try the tutorial videos, because the game will just plop you into a scenario and not explain how to do anything and assume that you have already watched the videos. If you do not enjoy the game, think it sucks, think Tony Hawk 2 is better, that is your opinion, and there places to post your feelings about that. I want to simply write up this guide to show how to do the moves. What I will do is talk about the types of tricks, and how to execute some tricks specifically, but I will not uncover all of the specific tricks. That will be what you can do as long as my guide makes sense. Honestly, I got tired of flicking my board up and just "hoping for the best". I wanted to understand what was happening. I decided to just sit down and figure it out (well, not sit down, but figure it out). I am hoping that everything I have figured out will truly help others so that people do not think this in unresponsive because every single review I have read of this game is where the person reviewing it is literally just flicking the board up and "hoping for the best" and not actually taking the time to learn how to do the tricks. Lucky for me, I am not a game reviewer, and can sit down for games a little longer and learn to not just flick the board up and "hope for the best". One important section that is here is the Tips and Tricks/Troubleshooting section. This section is in here because if you go through the steps on the guide, do everything perfect, and find that your character still refuses to do the trick you know for a fact you are executing correctly, than this section will guide you through the steps you can do to fix this. My hope is by the end of the guide that people will not just flick and "hope for the best" and actually know the exact tricks they are doing, and if they mess up a trick, to fully understand why they missed the trick and not just automatically blame it on the game. We all have that friend that will try something in a game, mess up, and blame it on the game. Unfortunately, now we just have huge masses doing that with a game, which is too bad. This is another main reason for this guide. [3] Basic Tips [BT] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am going to start off by saying that the skateboard controller has been seen as unresponsive. It is actually the opposite, it is too responsive. If you learn the way to stand on it and how to move your feet on it (which is one of the reasons of the guide I am making), then everything will happen much more smoothly. If you seem to be doing random tricks, it is because of where your feet are placed on the board and has nothing to do with the game not responding. Random tricks happen because you are doing the equivalent of playing Tekken 3 with Eddie and button mashing. When you randomly flick the board not understanding what you are doing. With that example, sure, it is possible to do some very cool combos with Eddie, but in the end, you really are not sure what you are doing and just button mashing to make it happen. I will tell you where to position your feet on the board for certain tricks to help assist and get rid of the randomness. Also, practice, practice, practice. This is not a game that you will be able to just start going nuts on. I do like to compare this game to games like Guitar Hero, because from my personal experience from games with an extra peripheral controller, playing it will not come right away. Unless you are magical, I would honestly be impressed to see somebody who has never played the newest Guitar Hero game play some of the tracks on Expert. Same goes here. Only you are not practicing and learning the notes or anything like that, you are really learning the moves. Trust me, once you learn to do the moves, the game is actually incredibly easy. Sure, I do not hit every single trick perfect every single time as my feet will slip a little or they will not be in the best place for the trick I want to do, but I do understand what it is that I need to do for the tricks and will easily hit the trick I am trying to do 98% to 99% of the time. Also, since this game relies heavily on your feet,I personally, suggest that unless you do alot with your feet, to play 30 minutes at a time and then take a small break or else your ankles might hurt. Again, I will compare to a rhythm game because it is easy, but I like to play drums on Rock Band, but I do stop after awhile to rest since I am personally not used to pounding on a pedal and working both of my wrists for that long of a period of time. If you play for 2 hours and are good, than rock on. Not everybody is the same. One final thing, this is definitely a game where you will want to plan your runs. After you play one of the levels a couple times to learn it, plan a run. Planning a run will help alot since you will be ready to switch up your foot positions faster. If you just go through a run and are not sure which trick you will be doing, there is a good chance that you will revert back to the style of flicking your board and just "hoping for the best" [4] Standing on the Board [SB] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- While this seems easy enough, just standing there, it is the biggest reason why so many tricks are missed. You are just not standing on it correctly. For most of the game, you should have your back foot as far back as possible on the board, and your front foot pushing up until right before the front of the board curves. I normally keep my back foot touching the back sensor as much as possible. The further you can get your foot without falling off of the board or losing control, the better. If you can manage to get your foot halfway off and still manage to play just fine, go for it (even though I would imagine that might hurt your foot after awhile). If you need to pedal, do one pedal and then move your feet right back to that position. What this will do when you keep your feet like this is always give you the advanced flip and grab tricks, and all you are doing is keeping your foot a few inches back. If you want to keep to simple tricks, move your back foot forward just a small bit so that it is touching the back sensor and not covering it in anyway. Also, bend your knees. Keep your legs loose. Trust me, it is much, much easier to hit tricks this way. If your legs are stiff, you will mess up, and you will mess up alot. Keep them loose and bend the knees. [5] (N)Ollie [ON] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is the most basic trick you can do. All you do is pop the front up, or pop the back up. Keeping the board up will allow for the flick tricks and some advanced tilt tricks. If all you want is a ollie/nollie, just pop the board really fast and bring it back down. If you seem to be doing only tilt tricks, than what is happening is that when you are popping your board up, your back foot is resting on the curve or partially on the curve on the back of the board, and not a flat part. What then happens is that any slight movement of your foot by putting a little too much pressure on your toes or heel will result in a tilt trick. Just simply move your back foot further back on the board. When I say back of the board, I am referring to right after the board curves. You can pretty much keep your back foot there for most of the game. I will explain other situations where you might switch that foot to another position. Pretty much just keep your back foot there. Another thing about ollies/nollies: You do not need to pop the board all of the way. Just pop it fast. I can do ollies/nollies by popping it up about 50-75%. If you are trying to pop it up without pulling the board all the way back, you will need to definitely practice it. If you pop it up too fast, it will be incredibly easy for you to tilt your back foot, and hence doing a tilt trick. [6] Tilt Tricks [TT] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These are mainly your heel flips and kick flips. These are probably going to be the tricks you seem to be doing the most since it is very easy to pop your board up and lean to one side. The simplest way to do one of these is to do an ollie/nollie then bring your board back down. Once it is back down, just lean on the left or right side of the board. Again, if you seem to be doing nothing but tilt tricks, you need to move your back foot further back on the board so that you will stop tilting the board once you are up in the air. If you go for a tilt trick and seem to do something random, but your back foot is on the very back, then also pay attention to your front foot. Your front foot should be somewhere near the front of the board. I personally rest it at the front just before the board curves up. There is a chance your foot is brushing too close to one of the side sensors and setting it off. Either that or your front foot is not firm on the board and slightly slips to tilt the board. This is another reason to keep your front foot against that curve, as it will help keep your front foot firm on the board. [7] Flick Tricks [FT] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These are a little more tricky, but with practice, you will be able to do one every time if your feet are positioned correctly. To do a flick trick, pop the board up, and the moment it is popped up, use your front foot to move the board either left or right. Do not start moving the board while you are popping, or else you will end up doing an advanced tilt trick. Make sure you are moving your front foot right or left after you pop your board up. If you are not doing flick tricks, than one of three things are happening: you are trying to move your front foot way too late, so the controller registers it as you trying to do a 180. If your dude just moves 45 to 90 degrees and wipes out, then that is a good sign that you are doing it too late. Or you are doing it too soon, which means as you are popping up, you are moving it up as well. 9 out of 10 times for me, this will register as a tilt trick since you are technically tilting the board in order for the board to move diagonally. The last thing is that nothing happens. Most of the time for me, this happens because I am not moving my front foot fast enough. After practicing a few times, the speed issue is not a big deal, and is very simple. Another cause of nothing happening is that you are not moving your front foot to the left or right enough. It is very tough to explain how to properly execute one of these, but it is easy for me to tell you why you are not doing one. If you are having alot of trouble with this, just go into free skate mode and practice. You might need to pop the board all the way up, you may only need to do it 50% up. Everybody is different, but the joy of this game is that it will accommodate you based on this. You do not have to move it to the left or right so fast that you are losing your balance, but it will take practice for you to discover what speed will work for you. Just pop up, move to left or right. It is that simple, and if it seems more complicated than that, you are trying to do something too complicated. If after all of this, you know you are doing it correctly and your character is still not doing it, read the Troubleshooting section of this guide to explain how to fix this issue. [8] Grabs [GB] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Grabs can be very tricky, or incredibly simple. If you want the game to feel more realistic when you play, then grabs can get very tricky. Basically, when you are in the air, just grab the board around one of the 3 sensors. I say three, because grabs do not work by grabbing the sensor behind you. Now for the super easy way to do grabs. Just use your feet. This is an instance where you will be moving your feet from the normal positions. All you do is just put your foot in front of the sensor for the grab that you want to do. Do not put your entire foot in front of the sensor or else there is a good chance you will accidentally pop the board up. Also make sure that you are in the air when you do this. If you start with your foot above a sensor before you go off something like a pipe, then you will end up doing an invert instead of your grab. [9] Spine Transfers [ST] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This one is actually explained in a tutorial video, but I found an even more simple way to do it. The video basically tells you to do an ollie off of the QP, and then once you are in the air, do the motions of a nollie. That is actually much harder than it sounds, because most of the time when you go to reposition your feet, you will tilt the board a little, and then it will register you doing a tilt trick, and not an spine transfer. These are incredibly simple. Since the game will ollie off of the QP for you no matter what difficulty setting you are at, just wait for your guy to get into the air. Once you are in the air, pop the back of the board up like a nollie. It is that simple. What I do is get into position like I am going to nollie before I go off of the QP, then it makes it much easier to just put weight on my front foot and do an spine transfer. [10] Manuals [MN] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sure, this one sound easy, but getting a decent manual without holding onto something can be difficult. I will tell you how it is simple. I actually got the achievement points for the 400ft continuous manual doing this. I am a 250lbs man, so manuals are not supposed to be easy. As for nose manuals, just reverse the instructions I give. Position your back foot right on the curve on the back of the board and your front foot just before the curve of the front of the board. Balance on your back foot. That is it. If you have horrible balance, then just do it the cheater way and hold onto a table or something. If you can balance on one foot for a minute or 2, try this. If you keep putting your front foot down, that means that the back foot is not far enough back, and just nudge it back very slightly and try again. After awhile, you will find that spot. Once you find the spot, just practice a couple more times. After awhile, you will get your back foot in position for the manual without even thinking about it. [11] (N)Ollie Setup [OS] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To do an ollie setup, just move your back foot as far back as you can. What will happen is that your back foot will partially cover the back sensor. Do not try to purposefully cover the back sensor. To know when your guy is doing an ollie setup, just keep moving your back foot back until the guy crouches down like he is getting ready to jump. The game is actually super easy if you always keep your back foot there. [11.1] Advanced Flip Tricks [AF] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- When you are trying to do advanced flip tricks, all you need to do is ollie from an ollie setup and then do your trick. The other way to hit advanced tilt tricks is to pop your board up, and tilt while you are popping your board up. This means that your front foot is only there to make sure the board is in place, and your back foot is doing all of the work (for most of this game outside of a few exceptions like flick tricks, spine transfers, it should be that way anyway) [11.2] Advanced Grab Tricks [AG] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For advanced grabs, just ollie/nollie from a setup and do a grab. I have successfully done advanced grabs this way. For example, when you go from a setup, ollie, and then grab the side sensor (which is normally an indy), you will do a Japan. [12] Grinds [GR] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Most people will get very used to the 50-50 grind, since that is the main grind that will happen. To do other grinds, position your board in a direction right before you hit the rail. For instance, to do a 5-0 grind, pop the board up like an ollie and hold it there while you grind. For board slides, do an ollie or nollie, and then while still popped up, turn 90 degrees to land on the rail. If you hit a board slide, you need to make sure to shift your board quickly back to the front before you hit the end of the rail and straighten yourself up. For most of the other grinds, all you have to do is pop the board, and then turn like you are doing a flick trick. Go slower than normal for a flick trick. This is where turning the board slow comes in to play. You can actually switch up the kind of grind you are doing in the middle of a grind if you turn the board with your front foot while grinding. Just remember to get your front foot back to the front before you are done with your grind. To switch up the grind while you are on a rail, just lift up your front foot and while it is up, immediately move it to the position that you want for your grind. This is one of the exceptions of where you want to move your front foot the moment you lift it up. [13] Flat Land Tricks [FL] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are really only 3 flatland or manual tricks that you can do, and those are the revert, the finger flip and the shove it. The shove it is pretty easy to do. All you do when you are in a manual is do a flick trick and then return the board back to the front. You will do a shove it and then continue to manual. The finger flip is done simply by grabbing the front of the board while in a manual. If I know that I want to do a finger flip, before I go into a manual, I will put my front foot on the front edge of the board, so that when I am doing a manual, all I have to do is just slightly slide my front foot up and cover the front sensor a little and I will do a finger flip. The revert is a little harder to do. In order to do a revert, while you are in a manual, you need to stay in a manual and then turn 180 degrees. I have done it a couple times, but this is another good example of when you should hold onto something while doing it. [14] Trick Transitions [TR] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am going to stress that you should not go into trick transitions until you are comfortable with ollies/nollies, flip tricks, and manuals. When I say comfortable, I mean just that. If you are still just flicking your board up and "hoping for the best", than I would highly suggest that you do not try to transition tricks together yet, as you are definitely not ready. Trick transitions are really what makes this game feel like a Tony Hawk game, as I can keep my score running through a 2 minute score attack run as long as I don't hit a QP since I have not found a way to do a revert coming out of a pipe. Now, I do not do this everytime, obviously, but I can do it a bunch of times. For street runs, it is all about going from manuals to grinds and grinds to manuals. For me, it is much easier for me to do regular manuals since I ride goofy, but for some, it might be easier to do nose manuals. For whatever I put in here, if you are a nose manual person, just reverse what I say. Now this is a part where I will highly stress again, if you do not have a really good sense of balance, treat this like Top Skater (you know, the arcade game). Hold onto a chair, a table, anything. I would like to say that I have a good sense of balance, but when I go for really big combos, I even catch myself holding onto something as well. Trust me, it helps. Now going from a grind to a manual is pretty self explanatory, but if you want to get a decent combo going, you need to do a flip trick or grab trick before you land. While grinding, just simply put your board flat on the ground near the end regardless of the grind you are doing (trust me, it is easier), and then just pop an ollie/nollie and do a normal trick. The moment you see the trick executing from your character, go directly into a manual. Don't worry, the game and controller will pick up on what you are doing. Going from manual to anything else is a little more complex, and this is where that chair or table is your best friend. This will require some force from your front foot now. What you do is right before you want to ollie, bring your front foot down close to hitting the floor. Do not bring it all the way down, or else the controller will more than likely register this as you ending your manual. Once your foot is almost down, pop it back up just like you were doing an ollie/nollie. That is it. Your dude will do a ollie/nollie, and then you can get into whatever other trick you are trying to do. The thing that makes this tricky is that it goes against what I said earlier about doing tricks, as your back foot will not be at the back. Remember, I already offered you a chair. If you are having trouble going from a manual to anything else, just learn to move your foot back when you go into a manual. It is much, much harder to hit the manual with your back foot on the far back, but if you are going for big combos already, you either found a chair or table to hold onto, or you have a good sense of balance. [15] Inverts/Stalls [IS] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Inverts and stalls are the moves you do at the very top of pipes. I like to think of these as the inverts being the top of the pipe grabs, and stalls being the top of the pipe flip tricks. It is just an easy way for me to distinguish these in my head. These are more tricks that are easy as long as you time them correctly. There are multiple types of inverts, and thus far in the game for challenges, for me, the game has only asked for just a regular invert, and nothing fancy. To do an invert, you need to put your hand over a sensor just before you get to the top of the pipe. The easiest way for me that I have used to make this happen is to cover the sensor when I am just about 3/4ths of the way up the pipe. One thing I learned is that you do not want to bend all the way down to cover the sensor, because what happens to me is that my rear is just above the sensor on the right and it will trigger that sensor. If your knees are already bent, than just put your hand or front foot in front of the front sensor. It will pick up that you are trying to do an invert. You really do not need actually grab the board. For stalls, you will be doing something similar. This time instead of doing a grab when you get 3/4ths of the way up the pipe, simply pop up with an ollie or nollie and hold the board popped up. [16] Vert [VR] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vert is similar to street with the exception that you are standing on the board with it sideways. Now you don't have to do that, but it makes vert much easier, and the game informs you that you should do it anyway. The way that I personally stand on the board for vert is that I have both of my feet on the very far edges of the board. I keep them just inside of the sensors on the ends. If you accidentally have your feet over the sensors, you will know because you will keep on doing inverts. If that happens, just move your feet in very slightly. To do the good vert tricks, it is all about timing your ollies/nollies. What I do is try to ollie/nollie at the very edge of the pipe. You will know right away if it is a good jump because your character will go into rotations. If your character does not go into rotations, then you more than likely popped the board way too late. What separates vert from the other modes is that when the board is sideways, you will also see your character going back and forth, and depending on what side of the ramp they are on and going up will depend on if you are doing an ollie or nollie. This part is pretty straight forward. If your guy is going up the left side and you pop the board with your left foot, you will nollie. If your guy is going up the right side and you pop the board with your left foot, you will ollie. The rest of the tricks (stalls, inverts, grabs, flip tricks) will all be executed the same way, the only exception is now you will have the board sideways. [17] Special [SP] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I decided to add this because I did not see anywhere in the game itself even explain this one. It is possible that I missed it somewhere, but I ended up figuring it out on my own. The special meter is pretty self explanatory. You do tricks and your special meter builds up. When your special meter is filled up, all you do is put your back foot over the back sensor while you are not in the middle of a trick or ollie/nollie. When you are in special, you guy will do bigger and badder moves. Unlike the other Tony Hawk's where if you hit special you had to hit a key combination to do extra moves, in this one, once special has started, you can continue the run and just do moves and your character will do the extra moves. An example is the air walk. When you are in special, just do a nose grab, and instead of a nose grab, your character will do an air walk. Of course you will be getting more points for the more advanced special moves as well. [18] Tips and Tricks/Troubleshooting [TP] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Do not wear shoes when you play this game. It is not a matter of messing up the board. An episode of bleep bloop on collegehumor.com showed the game and showed that they were actually trying to break the controller by just abusing it, and it still worked fine. It is just much easier to go into ollie/nollie setups without your shoes. I noticed that when I wear shoes, even if my feet are positioned correctly, the board will not always pick up on the fact that I am setup. When I have my shoes off, it will register everytime. I found out that ollie and nollie setups seem to work much better with using just your foot instead of trying with your shoe on. If you are having trouble doing some of the challenges that require a bunch of nollies and nose grinds, flip the board backwards after you have started the challenge. This means that when you do an ollie, it will register as a nollie. Just make sure that you get passed the screen where you hit the start button and tilt the back of the board up before you flip the board around. If you are having trouble doing advanced grinds, like rotating 90 degrees, than chances are that you are rotating your front foot too slow. I found this out because I was slowly rotating my front foot and it felt like nothing was happening. What was happening was that the controller was registering this as me trying to do a 180. When I say I was going slow, I mean I was going slow. X-Box Achievement/PS3 Trophy People: The best way to do this is to go completely through the game. If you get an achievement or trophy along the way, then cool. Some will come no matter what. After you go through the game, then go back to exhibition to get the rest. Flick Tricks not Working: This is a big one. I ran into this as well. If you find that no matter what you are doing, flick tricks are just not registering, than you need to recalibrate and resync your controller. If you continue to recalibrate your controller but are still getting the same result, then when you are recalibrating, you are not giving 4 feet of distance for the sensors. You only need to get four feet in between the board and anything else for calibrating. Trust me, I had to move furniture just to get my four feet. The best way to test if it is calibrated correctly is to just go to exhibition mode, select a trick section, go into a manual, and then do a shove it. If your dude does nothing is just pivots a little bit, you did not give yourself enough room when calibrating. Calibrating is the biggest pain since you absolutely need the 4 feet of space, but once you do, you can move your furniture back into place. [19] Conclusion [CL] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In conclusion, I really hope that this guide explains this game more. I am hoping that you guys will be able to take what I wrote in this guide and start doing bigger and better tricks, and at the same time stop the flicking and "hoping for the best" maneuver. I will not claim to be a Tony Hawk Ride expert, I just wanted to write up this guide so that others that are having difficulty with this game can read this and see how to execute the tricks so that the game gets easier. In all honesty, once you understand how to do tricks, the game truly does get much easier. When you know what you are doing, the controls will not seem unresponsive since if you miss a trick, you will know and understand why you missed it.