Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4

The Tony Hawk series holds a special place in my heart, especially Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. I was a huge fan of 1 and 2 as I got them for Christmas, but Tony Hawk to me was special because the PlayStation 2 came out when I was old enough to get a job, and it was the first video game console that I saved up and bought with my own money. What was the first game I bought for the PS2? Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3.

So, when Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 was released, I fell in love. It was a fantastic return for the series that had been in limbo and releasing trash for years. 1+2 hit all of those nostalgic warm and fuzzies I had been missing from this series for a long time, and I wanted more than anything else for them to do a 3+4 as well whether via DLC or a new game. Well after seemingly being cancelled and restarted again, we now have Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4. I both love this game and am very disappointed in it at the same time. 

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 is pretty much a continuation of the 1+2 remaster that was released a few years ago. The game contains remastered maps from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 and they all look pretty great, especially Suburbia which is one of my favorite maps of all time. Much like 3+4, I really like how the maps are portrayed as if this is what they'd look like after 20 years. Some of them are sadly now rundown and decrepit, like Skater Island which is a real-world location. It has since been shut down and abandoned due to the roof collapsing on the building—which has actually been recreated in game. 

This game has a massive selection of Skaters. From classics like Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen, and Kareem Cambell to the newer Skaters introduced in 1+2 like Lizzie Armanto and Riley Hawk. 3+4 introduces even more modern Skaters including Chloe Covell and Olympic gold medalist Yuto Horigomu.

This game, however, made one change I didn't like. In Tony Hawk's 1+2 you had Solo tours unlocked from the start, where you select a single skater and go through both campaigns with that character. All the stat points you unlock would be for that character only. Tony Hawk 3+4 changes this by having universal stat points, so, if you collect a stat point, you can use it on every character on the roster. This allows you to swap between characters if you want and still have all the same stat points as before. Now solo tours are unlockable in the game but that's only after you complete every goal in the game along with the pro goals that are unlocked. 

Just like classic Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 through 3, you are dropped in and have two minutes to complete the 10 objectives on the map. Four of the objectives are the same through each level with those being the high, pro, and sick high scores you have to achieve, along with collecting all of the S-K-A-T-E letters. Then there are objectives that are specific to each level, like performing a certain trick over a certain gap or collecting icons scattered throughout the map.

For the most part, all of the original objectives from the original Tony Hawk 3 are here with only some of them changed, mostly on Cruise Ship where they extended the goal where you have to collect the gold medal, and turned it into a stunt challenge where you have to lip trick a helicopter, perform a long grind on a long figure 8 wire, and perform a long grind down one of the hallways of the ship.

These maps all look beautiful as well, especially Airport, which is one of my favorite maps of the entire series. It now takes place at night. Suburbia, I think, looks so much better than the original, which now has a Halloween theme with the map taking place in Autumn, the houses decorated for Halloween, and the spooky Haunted House now looking even more terrifying. Performing a combo from the start of Airport all the way down to the bottom has never felt so satisfying. Overall, the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 portion of this game I was very happy.

Then, of course, there is the elephant in the room which has been discussed to death since this was first announced—and this is also where my disappointment sets in. The Tony Hawk 4 career that is included in 3+4 is not the original career mode. The big selling point of the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 was that the two-minute timer was removed, and you were able to skate around each level at your own pace. You could also take goals in any order you wanted by going over to an NPC with an icon over their head and accepting a mission. Some of these were your typical Tony Hawk goals, like getting high scores and collecting S-K-A-T-E, but since these levels were so huge there were some goals that spanned the entire map and would take the entire two-minute timer to complete.

I'm sure everyone who played Tony Hawk 4 when it first came out remembers escaping from Alcatraz. You basically had to learn how to speed run the level, finding the fastest route possible to make it all the way from the top to the bottom, while collecting the huge number of required icons on the way. Bail once and you might as well just restart. Unfortunately, these goals are no more and are replaced with simplified goals that fit the two-minute timer, such as high, pro and sick scores, getting the secret tape, and a lot of new objectives that try to pay homage to the original Tony Hawk's 4 career mode.

But the biggest offender here is that a fan favorite map, "Zoo," has been completely decimated. There are no animal NPCs at all, and the level itself has been turned into a competition level as has Kona. This was the most disappointing thing to me, as both of those maps are two of my favorites from the original game. I still had fun playing through these levels, and the recreated levels looked fantastic, but I still couldn't help but feel disappointed that it just wasn't the same. There is somewhat of a solution to losing the career mode from Tony Hawk 4 as they added the ability to increase the timer from two-minutes all the way up to 60 minutes if you want, so you could set the timer to 60 minutes and that would be more than enough time to skate around freely and not have to worry about the timer while still having objectives to complete. 

Tony Hawk 4 also loses two levels from the original game in Chicago and Carnival, but in its place we get three brand new levels with Movie Studio, Waterpark, and Pinball. The good thing is that these maps are fantastic. Movie Studio is, unfortunately, a competition level, so there aren't any special goals. But the map does look great as you skate backstage while a movie is filming with green screens everywhere and a number of good lines here.

Water Park is probably my favorite out of the new maps and looks exactly like something that the original Neversoft team would have added into the games back in the PS2 era. This map is absolutely beautiful with tons of slides to grind and empty pools and lots of doors that will bring you to the tops of slides that you can then ride down to the bottom.

The final map, Pinball, is probably the most gimmicky of the new maps: you skate through the inside of a Pinball machine. Personally, I love this map, and it looks absolutely beautiful, although I will say that I can understand the criticisms of this map where you can be randomly knocked down by pinballs flying throughout the map. Pinball doesn't have a lot of opportunity for Vert tricks, as this map is almost like a reverse downhill map where you start off in the plunger of the machine, hit a launchpad, and skate your way to the top of the map.  

One of the things that has always been a staple of the series has been its soundtracks. So much so that I think the soundtracks are part of the identity of the series. When I played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, it instantly made me feel like a teenager again. Having all those levels recreated with a large majority of the original soundtracks made me feel like I was a kid again.

Sadly, I don't feel the same with 3+4. Only 10 songs from the original THPS 3 and 4 make a return here. The rest of the soundtrack is new songs. While I will say the soundtrack isn't bad, I really wish there were more songs from the original soundtracks. We got some greats like Motorhead's "Ace of Spades," Del the Funky Homosapien's "If You Must," CKY's "96 Quite Bitter Beings," and Gang Starr's "Mass Appeal." But there are some crazy omissions here like "Spokesman" from Goldfinger and Alien Ant Farm's "Wish."

I can totally understand wanting people to discover new music. I wasn't expecting the entire soundtrack from both games to be accounted for, but after 1+2 having almost the entire soundtracks from both games, I was expecting a lot more than 10 songs between both games to be here. Is this game breaking? Absolutely not. The new music here is good, but like the removal of career mode from Tony Hawk 4, it just doesn't hit those nostalgia vibes that I got from the first game when playing 3+4 like I did with 1+2.

In terms of other content, there is a ton of replay value here, because after you complete the campaigns for both games you unlock Pro goals which are an additional five goals for each level—and some of these are extremely difficult. They are called Pro for a reason because if you are struggling to hit 400,000 points in a two-minute session and don't want to increase the timer, well, good luck getting 800,000 to 1,000,000 points for some of these Pro goals.

Each level also has your standard stat points and cash to find. But there are also hidden decks and Iron Galaxy tokens which will give you the ability to buy things in the new secret shop, like additional clothing for your created Skater and game modifiers like different screen filters.

There are also tons of challenges to complete for both Tony Hawk 3 and 4, along with a specific challenge for each skater. Online multiplayer modes return, like high score, graffiti, and high combo. But a new mode has been introduced called HAWK mode. In this mode you have to ride around each level, picked at random, and place down the letters in the word HAWK. Then you have to find all the other players' letters. This mode is incredibly fun, and I can see myself playing this a ton in the future.

Finally, Create a Park returns and has been expanded. Also returning is the ability to upload your parks for others to play. Unfortunately, because they didn't learn their lesson with Tony Hawk 1+2 and having achievements and challenges tied to Create a Park, the front page of Create a Park is littered with low-effort garbage with titles like "pls upvote" and "upvote for achievement" or "900 the 900." It's a shame because the additions to Create a Park this year are really cool, including the ability to add your own goals to the park so you can place your SKATE letters, set scores, and place things for people to collect as well. Going through the list I have seen some pretty cool creations, such as recreating the Warehouse from the first Tony Hawk game, or the Bull Ring from Tony Hawk 2.

Overall, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 is a great game in its own right. For the first time in a long time the future looks bright for the series. Unfortunately, the nostalgia for the original games didn't hit as hard for me as it did with 1+2, but I can look past that and appreciate 3+4 for what it is.

At the end of the day, I both love Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 and will continue to play it for quite some time. But I'm also disappointed by what we got as well. Regardless, whether we get remakes of Tony Hawk's Underground, or even a brand-new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 6, the series is in good hands—and that is very much worth celebrating.