The Tony Hawk series has been extremely successful for Activision. However, over the years the series has changed and some fans would like things to revert back to the way they were with the first few Tony Hawk titles. Well, Activision is listening to your demands and the company will be releasing Tony Hawk's Project 8 for next generation consoles. We took a quick look at the Xbox 360 version of Project 8, and Tony Hawk fans will have a lot to look forward to when the game ships later this year.

First and foremost, Project 8 has been rebuilt from the ground up. Just about every Tony Hawk game prior to Project 8 has run on the same basic skating engine. There have been some modifications made with each new title in the series, but the original skating engine is still at the heart of each game. The first demo we were shown of Project 8 was how the skating engine has been completely redone using the power of next generation hardware. The result is a skaters dream as each of the boarders in Tony Hawk's Project 8 skates with lifelike realism.

Adding to the huge boost in realism is the new advanced 3D scanning technology that the team at Neversoft has used on all of the professional skaters in the game. Neversoft has a new motion capture facility that allows the development team to recreate how a skater moves in real life. In addition each of the professional skaters will feature 100,000 polygons in their head alone. This allows for unmatched attention to detail in each of the professional skaters.

The animation within the game has also been given a significant bump with over 20 animations for each skater. This allows for a much more lifelike appearance while their skating. In fact, while the balance meter is still present, you don't need to use it anymore. Players will be able to watch the animation of the skater to determine how well they're balancing and correct appropriately. The new physics, momentum and gravity engines, as well as use of the Havok engine for bails, have added to this making Tony Hawk's Project 8 one of the most lifelike sports games yet.

Project 8 isn't all about graphics and animation though. In Tony Hawk's Project 8, Tony is on a search for the top eight amateur skaters I the world. There will be a huge seamless world that skaters can move around in, and the goals will work differently this time around. Instead of having goals of varying difficulty, the goals will all be the same. Each goal will have three different difficulty ratings from amateur to pro to sick. You may have to complete four tricks in 30 seconds to attain the amateur rating, but it may take 20 tricks in 30 seconds to reach the sick rating.

From what we've seen of Tony Hawk's Project 8, it's a return to roots that fans of the series have been asking for. On top of everything else that's been enhanced to perfection in Project 8, the development team has also given the AI a significant boost. Spectators will now get into the action. All of this adds up to a Tony Hawk game that all future Tony Hawk titles will be compared to. We'll have more on the ambitious redesign in the coming months.