10 Video Games That Were Sold On Stupid Gameplay Gimmicks

4. OTT Bailing - Tony Hawk's Project 8

After moving on from the pitch-perfect arcade skateboarding of the Pro Skater series, from Tony Hawk's Underground onwards the once-great franchise started to rely on increasingly silly gimmicks to keep sales high.

After going a step too far by essentially becoming Jackass: The Game with Underground 2 though, the devs attempted to pull back a bit with Project 8. Still not confident that skateboarding alone could attract enough players to recoup development costs, once again the devs had to introduce a WACKY new game mode to draw fans in.

Introducing a "bail mode" that allowed players to purposefully fling their skater off their board, the idea was to break as many bones and inflict as much damage to their avatar as humanly possible. It was a bit like the car crash mode in Burnout, only not good.

If you got enough speed and started the bail after the jump you could launch yourself for miles, crashing your character into every sharp or blunt object on their crushing fall back down to Earth.

It was funny for about 5 minutes, and became indicative of just how far the series had veered away from its roots.