Got Japan Air? Grind the half-pipe with George Soropos.
If you haven't yet seen a game to give you sufficient reason to supplement the goodness of your much loved PC with any of the new consoles, then you are probably a sensible and astute gamer. Almost every really good game released for the Xbox and PS2 has also become, eventually, available for PC. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 on the other hand will only be available to next generation console owners. 'Mum, can I have a PS2 for Christmas?' -- Someone, somewhere reading this review.
Tony Hawk 4 represents the biggest upgrade in the series so far, with more changes and additions than the last two versions combined. The first change any experienced player will notice is the much higher skill levels of the skaters available from the start of the game.
Skaters still have to earn points to upgrade various skill areas, but the default skill levels of the skaters allows you to pull off moves early on that were impossible in the previous incarnations of the game. For example, it's now possible to make your skater ollie up a wall and then ollie again to jump even further up. Such a move was impossible mid-way through THPS 3.
The controls respond instantly and consistently giving you a feeling of being in total control. This is obviously in response to complaints about the sometimes sluggish and difficult combo controls in THPS 3 that made some moves very frustrating and others nearly impossible. The new silky smooth control mechanism helps to enhance Tony Hawk's many new tricks. You can now easily do a more advanced version of any trick by double tapping the grab trick button or the flip trick button: hold down the grab button to do a Japan Air or double tap the grab button to pull off a One Footed Japan Air.
Every trick has a more advanced version that can be used to nab some extra points.
The most significant new trick has to be the 'spine' transfers. By pressing the left and right triggers simultaneously while jumping towards a wall players can transfer over the spine of the wall and make a smooth landing. What makes this move so good is that it can be used anywhere, not just over walls. Similar to the leveling out ability in Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder, your skater can now level out his or her board when they are out of control or badly positioned (ie. the footpath is about to smeared with your face) This is a Godsend to all those players who have the nasty tendency to jump off the side of quarter-pipes; as you can now pull off an emergency landing. However, the trick that's the most fun to play around with is 'skitching' -- hitching a ride from passing vehicles by grabbing onto them.
The design of Tony 4 is quite different to earlier games in that it takes a more freeform approach to gameplay. You no longer need to play through the entire game as each individual skater -- whatever you do with one skater counts for all of them. The game is goal-orientated, with tasks given to you by people on the street, on rooftops and wherever else you can find them. There is no time limit on any of the levels until you decide to take up a challenge. At any time you can skate up to a person and press the B button to talk to them and get a challenge. Players will be asked to outrun cops, knock down obnoxious people and tear down banners just to name a few. Once a challenge is started the clock starts counting down. If time runs out you just press the Start button to try again, or you can keep on skating in search of a simpler challenge.
Believe it not, there's more. The skater-specific Pro Challenges inject a whole new element into the game after you've accomplished 90 of the game's 190 total challenges.
The Pro Challenges are great for fans of particular skaters and total rubes alike as it offers background on the particular things each skater did to make his or her mark. You then get four or five minutes to mimic their historic moment! So even though you don't have to complete challenges with every skater as in THPS3, Neversoft has cleverly given players a reason to use all the skaters anyway.
We haven't even mentioned the huge, wonderful maps yet. The skating arenas on Tony 4 are bigger, better and have much more variety of terrain than ever before. You'll spend hours as a tourist in each one looking for spots to pull off some crazy tricks, kind of like GTA 3. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 is easily the best in the series so far and not a bad reason at all to grab a next generation console.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012