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We're so proud of the individuals who managed to play through the pain radiating from their twisted, throbbing ankle, and craft a review for the latest (peripheral-infused) installment in the Hawkman's gaming franchise, Tony Hawk: Ride. Here's what these brave, persistent critics had to say about the experience.

• Game Informer (5.75/10): "As a skateboarder and as a gamer, Tony Hawk: Ride is a curious idea but a letdown in practice. The huge level of frustration is not worth the time it takes to master the awkward gameplay idiosyncrasies."
• IGN (5/10): "The idea? A more immersive skateboarding game that would ride the recent wave of hit games featuring their own custom controllers. The result? An expensive proposition that neither casual nor hardcore gamers will get much out of."
• GameSpy (2.5/5 Stars): "As expected, Tony Hawk Ride is an experiment -- an interesting and ambitious experiment, but one that doesn't come together as a fully functional experience. I love the basic feel of the board, and had occasional bouts of fun amidst frequent frustration, but THR's gargantuan buy-in price is an awful lot to ask of an effective guinea pig audience."
• Giant Bomb (1/5 Stars): "While the Tony Hawk franchise has been down on its luck lately, and was probably in need of a reboot as dramatic as this, the execution is such a miserable failure that it manages to splash even more mud on Tony Hawk's legacy. I'm left with a firm belief that whichever side of the Tony Hawk/Activision partnership has the out clause in the contract should just exercise it and part ways for good. Enough is enough. "

In the realm of games that cost over $100 released by Activision this holiday season (we're counting four including the Prestige Edition Modern Warfare 2 pack), Tony Hawk Ride wasn't one that we thought of as a hot ticket item. The man who lent his name to the series, however, has a different take, saying in a recent interview with GameSpot UK on the prospect of a sequel to Ride that "We have already started that process, but who knows what the future holds."

Additionally, like multiple people at Ride developer Robomodo have already intimated, Hawk confirms plans to put the game's board to use in other places – specifically, the woefully underserved snowboarding and surfing game genres. Hawk even speaks of resurrecting one-shot last-gen game Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer, saying, "I always thought that Kelly Slater's [Pro Surfer] was an underrated title for the PlayStation 2 ... I thought that people didn't really give it the attention it deserved." And us, well, we're still hoping that someone makes a bicycle peripheral so that we can finally get the reboot of Downhill Domination that we've been waiting for.

Robomodo CEO David Michicich hinted that more software for the Tony Hawk: RIDE skateboard controller could be on its way. When asked if the developer had other ideas for the peripheral's use outside of the skating genre in an interview with Develop, Michicich replied, "We're doing a game with Activision and we're not allowed to talk about it right now."

In June 2009, Robomodo president Joshua Tsui commented that the (probably going to be involved in its fair share of accidental injury lawsuits) peripheral could be used for a variety of software. "The obvious ones are snowboarding and surfing and such," he told Videogamer.

With a new entry into the Tony Hawk: RIDE franchise probably already in the planning stages, it appears the hardware will see new software to help lighten consumer guilt. Sure, our dream is for some kind of Lumberjack Simulator to be in development, but the controller will more than likely focus on something closer to snowboarding. If EA hasn't jumped on that train yet, former EA employees are more than welcome to try.

We debated which of the two video assets Activision recently sent us for Tony Hawk: Ride should go a the top of the post, and which should be relegated to the unfavorable, post-jump real estate. The in-game trailer is pretty slick, and features that super catchy We Are Scientists jam. (You know the one, you hip guy, you.) However, the gameplay demonstration actually shows the peripheral being used to go on a "sick run," apparently part of a long-standing feud between Activision and Robomodo.

We decided to put the "sick run" at the top of the post, if only because we want you to know that this is exactly how we looked the first time we played the game at E3. Only we didn't crash quite so much, and also, when we finished playing, Tony Hawk himself came up and gave us a high-five with one of his giant hands. Check out the video above, then click past the jump to check out its neglected (but catchy!) brother.

This week's Nintendo Channel update is chock full of Wii Fit Plus stuff again, but we'd like to draw your attention to the video tutorial on how to play Tony Hawk Ride. It answers a lot of the super important questions we've had -- like, "Does this peripheral work with both male and female gamers?" and, "Is this one of the most advanced game controllers ever created?"

Head past the break for the full list of this week's content.

Remember when we thought every Wii game was going to let you play as your Mii? And then remember when that didn't happen and the inclusion of Miis into every third-party game was a Big Deal? This news about Tony Hawk Ride makes us nostalgic for both of those times.

Developer Buzz Monkey and Activision have received the mysteriously elusive permission from Nintendo to include Mii support, allowing users not only to play as their own Miis, but as included Mii likenesses of the pro skaters featured in the game. So if the in-game Tony Hawk avatar doesn't have a big enough head for you, there's a built-in solution.

In addition to the extra Mii features, Tony Hawk Ride on the Wii will include two exclusive levels. Usually, motion controls are enough of an exclusive feature for a game's Wii version, but this time, of course, that isn't the case, and it looks like Activision has found interesting ways to compensate. Enjoy some footage from the Wii game after the break.

While both Guitar Hero World Tour and 5 included Mii modes, Xbox Avatar support was new for the latest GH game. We've contacted Activision to determine whether Avatars will find their way into Ride as well.

If you want to watch friends and loved ones pretend to skateboard/fall repeatedly this fall, Robomodo's Tony Hawk Ride is the only product catering to those admittedly unhealthy urges. Here's how those monsters came up with the name.
When Josh & I first talked about creating this company, I offered up the name because I felt it fit the criteria we were trying to fill:

1. Sounds "fun" (i.e. anybody hearing it would expect to be entertained by our product)
2. Rolls off the tongue & unique
3. Available (i.e. its .com isn't already spoken for)
4. "Just fits" (i.e. is applicable to what we're all about)

So in translation, it means "Robot Style". The way it struck a cord with us at the time is that it was made up of two words that apart represented the team's components, and together its development philosophy. "Robo" would represent the Software Engineers and gameplay code, while "Modo" would represent the Artists and their stylish vision for it. At Robomodo, we adhere to a philosophy loop of "art supports gameplay supports art...". It's all about harmony, with the end goal of developing fun & exciting games for a mass audience. Besides, who doesn't love robots?

Despite concerns that one third of Activision's holiday peripheral triforce would be missing its North American release date, the publisher has assured us today that Tony Hawk Ride will still be arriving on November 17 as planned. A rep from Acti told Joystiq, "The game is on sale Nov. 17 in the US, Nov. 27 in Germany and Dec. 4 in the UK," confirming a two week delay for United Kingdom-ers.

We may be getting the game two weeks before you folks in the UK but look at it this way: now you have two more weeks to sell off your furniture and reorganize your living room for all your new plastic peripherals. Hooray!

Hi. I'm Joystiq writer Griffin McElroy, and those are my feet. They're attached to my shins, which attach to a long sequence of other appendages which stop at my brain -- which at the very moment this image was taken, was likely in a confused, panicked state. It's a reflex reaction I usually turn to when placed before an alien video game peripheral, although in most cases, it quickly subsides, and is replaced with a steely determination to figure out how it works.

By the time I'd reached the end of my brief hands-on session with Tony Hawk Ride, I had only just begun to deconstruct the hardware's machinations, and started determining how to deftly manipulate it in order to do sweet tricks. I was making progress in this endeavor when the demo came to a halt, but I'm still not sure my mind had completely wrapped around how I was supposed to manipulate the device. Is that indicative of the peripheral's weakness? No, I think it can be entirely chalked up to the fact that skateboarders move in mysterious ways.

If you're looking to add a dash of '80s flair to your Tony Hawk Ride experience, you can either glue the skateboard peripheral onto one of those longboards, or you could just pre-order the game at GameStop. Those who choose the latter will gain access to the 80s Quicksilver Level, which is said to include a "Vert Ramp challenge sandwiched between two 747's on the runway of the Frankfurt Airport decked out in Quiksilver 80's theme including Tony Hawk himself." We guess Germany loves two things, then: David Hasselhoff and '80s-themed skateboard challenges.

[Via Go Nintendo]

The last time we saw Tony Hawk Ride, it was being played by a bunch of pro skaters who were falling over each other to proclaim the game's brilliance (it couldn't have anything to do with the fact they're all in the game, right?). Well, consider this video the sequel, as it brings even more pro skaters in to offer their very valid, objective feelings on the game. Can you believe they absolutely love it? We. Are. Shocked.

Activision will ship Tony Hawk Ride's skateboard peripheral with some extra padding in the box for those without carpets to place it on. A company representative told Joystiq at GamesCom today that the board will ship with "two strips, stickers," but couldn't precisely describe the thickness or provide an example. He implied the strips would run along the long flat bottom on both sides, which still makes us nervous for folks with hardwood floors if they -- or a rambunctious group of children -- attempt an ollie with the peripheral. For the record, the rep told us the "recommended surface [to play on] is carpet."

We asked the rep if the company plans to introduce a prophylactic that could cover the bottom of the board, but were told, "[We] haven't decided on that." Assurances were made that the board has gone through lots of durability testing -- even though it's not the board we're worried about. It uses 4 AA batteries and can apparently last 30-40 hours, with a "sleep mode" kicking in after about 30 minutes to an hour.

Was it this silly when Guitar Hero first launched, with professional musicians trotted out to awkwardly "play" the game? Watching an aging Tony Hawk, grey hair in-tow, contort his body on the skateboard peripheral shipping with Tony Hawk Ride is the very definition of wahjah.

Try as Activision might, we're still not convinced we need yet another peripheral for our already cramped living rooms. Consider that we've already used our BalanceBoard for snowboarding, Sony's EyeToy is sounding more robust every day and Project Natal is promising a board-free skateboarding experience. See the common denominator? No new, large plastic objects in our houses! That's a win-win to us.

Enjoy full control of your limbs while you still have it: There's just one week and two months until you US residents can hop on the Tony Hawk Ride board peripheral and promptly fall off, fracturing a least a few crucial bones in the process.

The question, of course, is how much you'll have to pay for the privilege when the game arrives Nov. 17. Hopefully we'll get something more concrete than GameStop's $120 estimate soon.