"The Hawk is back, bigger and better then ever!"

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3: the series lives on strong. A very hyped up game, it lives up to all the hype created, and sets the standard for all new skateboarding games. Available for PS2, PSX, GameCube, and GameBoy Color, it is being ported to the XBox and computer sometime in March 2002. Though some may say that the THPS series needs to end because it’s being beaten into the ground, I believe that each installment of the series simply adds to the strength of the series. Each new THPS game improves over the next somehow. Read on to find the many ways the third is vastly superior to the second.

Graphics: 90/100

Yeah, yeah, before any bashing, let me explain. The PS2 has no anti-aliasing and its “emotion engine” has yet to be fully utilized, as well as the rest of the hardware, so the PS2 version (the original, actually) is loaded with “jaggies” (edges are not smoothed over and gives them a rough feeling). The other visual downfall of the PlayStation 2 version is the fact that sometimes, in certain areas, the game has random slowdown. This is a problem with most PS2 games, but the amount of it is average in THPS3. However, being the almighty PS2, the graphics are very, very superior to the PSX version (along with any of the THPS2 ports). They have added new animations, such as when you don’t land a kickflip, the person lands on top of the flipped-over board, but does not fall, just like they would in real life. Couple of those, and my favorite: skaters actually bend their knees when they land! Not just their upper torso, ala THPS2, but their whole body! It looks very lifelike. Great job in the visual department, you can tell Neversoft/Activision spent a great deal of time on them.

Audio: 97/100

Living up to the tradition of the great THPS soundtracks, the third is no different. I don’t know the bands’ names, but I do have most of the songs memorized. Out of sixteen (16) total songs, there are only one or two I do not like. The music style, pop/punk, is of course very well-suited for a skateboarding game. The sound effects haven’t really been improved, or maybe my TV is just old (13 years, not that old.....) I need a new TV and a new sound system for my game consoles. Other than that, everything sounds just like it should in real life.

Gameplay: 100+/100

Where the game shines the most. Just like the others, you skate around and complete objectives, like Pro and High Scores, collect SKATE, and such. But some of them are very funny, such as in Canada, you ram into a lamp post to “unstuck Chuck”, who has gotten his tongue stuck to an icy cold metal street light, and ramming into a tree to cover a bully in snow. Some are very funny, and most are fun to get, despite the difficulty (not hard). The perfect controls, as usual, make the game even more fun to play.

Controls: 100+/100

X ollies, Square flips, Circle grabs, Triangle grinds, and the like. Nothing has changed. There is an improvement here, however; when landing on a quarter-pipe, you can press L2 to perform a Revert, which turns the skater around and permits them to link vert tricks together. To make it harder, you slow down a good deal when landing a revert. This makes it impossible to link more than two or three 900’s together. THPS3 controls: sheer perfection. It takes a while to get used to, just like the manuals from THPS2 (still included in 3!), but once you get comfortable with the revert, you will be reverting all over the place.

Replay Value: 100/100

I’ve had more fun in Canada than I have had with the entire game of THPS2. The levels are not sheer works of art such as the first THPS, but come pretty close. Once again, Neversoft and Activision have brought great levels to the Tony Hawk name. They are all intricate, colorful, and highly detailed, so you can once again grind pretty much anything that looks “grindable”. Also, some levels have little switches, such as Canada, where you set it off while grinding or whatever, and it unlocks a whole new part of the course. No THPS game is complete without secret areas :)

Overall: 100/100

THPS3 is a fantastic game. Even if you are not a skateboarding fan, you’ll still love the game because it’s just so much fun. The street skaters now have “style”; the first and second games did not. You’d have to play the game to see what I mean, like a 180 kickflip looks almost exactly like it would with real world physics. The game manages to pull that off, but still keep faithful to the THPS name and make it possible to pull off multi-million point combos (my high is 3.1 million!).

Trust me, you’d be shooting yourself in the foot to not pick up a game of this caliber, especially if you’re a seasoned fan of the first two.

Also, if you simply must buy the PSX version, buy that one first, because it has a good amount of features removed from the PS2 version, along with bad graphics. But that is all IMO, of course.

One last thing: if you like THPS3, stay the hell away from ESPN: X-games Extreme Skateboarding. Period.

Total GameFAQs Score (not an average): 10/10

Note: This will probably send floods of flames to my Inbox, but I must say this: Tony Hawk is a bad street skater. He is a vert skater, and an awesome vert skater at that, probably the best out there at vert. But he has no style in street skating. There are tons upon tons of better street skaters than Hawk. To name a few: Mullen, Koston, Creager, Song, Santos. Maybe even Margera. This is just my opinion. I think the name should have been called Rodney Mullen’s Pro Skater, because the game is about 80% street, 20% vert. Oh well :Þ