The holiday rush of new video game and console launches can leave gamers more than a bit baffled.

Even the best online guides or walkthroughs — at sites that post user-generated text like GameFaqs — don't reveal all the Easter Eggs, hidden levels or timesaving tricks that can be found in new games.

So we went straight to the source — the designers and producers — to hear their favorite tricks or tips on three of the season's biggest titles. The venue: Spike TV's annual Video Game Awards, held last Friday at USC's Galen Center and airing Wednesday at 10 p.m. EST.

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TONY HAWK'S PROJECT 8 and DOWNHILL JAM

Tony Hawk says he's been more busy sneaking into his 7-year-old son's room to play the fitness challenge on Wii Sports than thinking about his own video game. "My fitness age right now is 28. I'm feeling pretty good about myself. My first try, I think I was 64," says the 38-year-old skateboarding icon.

But he will say this about "Project 8," his eighth video game out now for the Xbox 360 and PS3: "If you finish it but you haven't completed every challenge at the Pro level, there is an entirely new game out there for you to play. ... Until you've reached the top four, you haven't played the game."

Also, the game's new bailing feature allows gamers to turn falling off your board — typically a failure — into an accomplishment. "Once he starts falling you can continue that process and see how many bones you can break and what kind of hospital bill you can rack up," Hawk says. "My favorite aspect of that is the bowling feature. There's actually human-size pins lined up in the street, and you have to bail your way through the pins, knock down as many as you can. Honestly, my record is seven. I couldn't get a strike."

As for "Downhill Jam," the more scaled-down game out now on the Wii, Hawk says, "Look for any breaks in the barriers of the road, because that is definitely a shortcut, and you will blow by anyone."

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GEARS OF WAR

The massively successful third-person action game for the Xbox 360 — perhaps the first truly must-have titles for the year-old console — is primarily about shooting up aliens and moving on. But lead designer Cliff Bleszinski advises gamers to watch for the 50-some cog tags scattered throughout. "They're like dog tags. They're tags of the soldiers that've fallen in battle. ... It's kind of an homage to all the soldiers who've given their lives for the cause of the war. The game's an action game, but it kind of adds an element of exploration to it."

"If you look around for this red symbol — the symbol of the game, it's called the Crimson Omen — you can find these cog tags throughout the game. If you look under furniture, if you scour the battlefield, look near dead bodies, you'll find that." Your reward: An 'achievement' to add to your profile, coveted by Xbox Live users. Another trick from Bleszinski: Active reloading. "If you press the right bumper again after you reload, you can reload again faster," he says. "If you do that with the bow weapon, your shot will actually straighten out quicker, and stick in enemies quicker. It's kind of a cool secret."

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THE ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION

The open-ended "Oblivion," out now for PC and Xbox 360 and available soon on PS3, is ripe for modding and mini-games, says executive producer Todd Howard. His favorites include poison apples and fanboy killings. Huh? He explains: "If you join the assassin's guild, you can make your own poison apples and hand them out to everybody in the world and they eat them and die." Um, so if you kill everybody, what do you do then? "You feel the glee of being a horrible assassin," Howard says.

If you finish the arena section and become a champion gladiator, you "win" fanboys modeled after the geeky blond character in "The Incredibles." "He follows you around and offers you backrubs," Howard says. But when it comes time to fight, the fanboy runs away, so gamers sought out ways to, ahem, eliminate their admirer. "People have modded the game to be able to take him to the top of the Imperial City Tower — the tallest point in the game — and they built these long planks for him to walk. They use the Havok physics (engine), and they cause boulders to fall on him and these extraneous ways for him to die and fall miles to his death." For some examples on YouTube, start here.

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asap staff reporter Ryan Pearson feels old when he thinks about playing the very first Tony Hawk game.

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