"Girls dig scars and broken limbs, don't they?"

I was expecting this to be good. The first two Tonys still get (got when this arrived) a multiplayer workout now and again, while that first skate park from Tony Hawk 1 is stored in the special, never-to-be-erased part of my brain usually reserved for my name, where I live and what my parents look like. Frankly, I would've already been pleased to see a more detailed version of Tony 2 appear on PS2 and would happily have blown 50 bucks on it.

They talked of changes, of new features, of clever interactive missions and storylines, but, in the end, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is surprisingly familiar. The new, environment-based chores don't make any difference to how the game plays, except that instead of trundling about looking for items, you trundle about about looking for trigger points to set off events. Then you watch the event happen and continue about your business. Not much new there, then.

So, it's a good job that Tony 3 is a next-gen console game that really looks and sounds like a next-gen console game. It's not a half-arsed effort which looks like a slightly better PSX game, nor does it have the glitchy pastel shades of a PC conversion. No, Tony 3 is a PS2 game that makes the machine look like it is capable of a sort of magic that presents a controllable version of real-life on your TV. Summary: it looks awesome.

Animation is seamless, with your skater spinning and transitioning between moves with the smoothness of a lubed ballet dancer. But they hit the ground substantially harder and with less style, crashing to the floor with a stunning flurry of noise and blood. Unless you only slightly botch the landing, in which case they stumble and stay on their feet, before picking up the board and continuing. A nice effort well done, that is. People stand around watching, cars drive about, pedestrians relevant to your challenges shout at you for help. That's why you've had to wait so long for a PS2 Hawk game - they've been polishing this one's edges for quite some time.

They've kept the skate zones small and compact in Tony 3. That's not a complaint - tiny parks are better, cutting down the tedious trundling and upping the trick potential. The small Foundry is every bit as good as the memorable first skate park from the original Tony, being a rail-packed and half-piped mini masterpiece.
The Canadian track is a right old mixed bag though, offering a grind-heaven car park that's ideal for racking up 100,000-plus combo scores, but then careering off the course design rails with its bland and confusing woodland areas.

Skateboarders and trees just don't mix. Good then, that the rest of the tracks are suitably urban and full of man-made ramps and ledges. Rio - the first of the skate competition interludes - challenges you to grind, manual and ollie your way around the entire surround of the course without touching the ground. Do that in two out of your three runs and the gold medal is a banker.

And even on the levels you initially dislike (Suburbia's seemingly dull building site and trailer par, for example), a bit of exploration soon reaps rewards. You'll find an area that suits your skills - either a selection of ramps for you aerial freaks, or some suspiciously placed grindable banisters and building edges for the sliders out there.

Concentrate on one area and learn it impeccably, then move on to another. It's like having six or seven mini hot-spots inside each park. Which can only be a good thing.

Proof of how far the game has evolved comes when playing the Warehouse level from Tony 1, recreated perfectly for you in this new game. The classic old course seems staggeringly empty and boring compared to Tony 3's grinding metropolises, offering only one half-pipe, a couple of rails and two or three ramps. What was a fresh, exciting location for skating years ago now seems like a tiny and rubbish empty little room. But it's still nice to have it in Tony 3, you know, for old time's sake - nostalgic skate.

Gameplay, as ever, has been tweaked for this sequel. But also in keeping with game law, you'll be pretty hard pressed to notice anything massively new, aside from the beautiful addition of the 'revert' to open up stunning six-figure trick scores. Land from a vertical trick, hit a revert before pulling a quick manual, then continue about your combo-racking business. It takes time to master, but the scores possible as a result are among the most satisfying achievements in gaming history.

Challenges are still the core, with the standard collect-the-hidden-tapes thing, the point-scoring-challenge thing, the collect the letters S, K, A, T and E thing, and the perform-certain-tricks-over-certain-obstacles thing. New to Tony 3 are challenges to impress local skaters with your skills, plus a whole host of comedy interludes that see you assisting the locals. Sadly, most of these new challenges are solved by grinding along a railing near a switch, or jumping into someone. For all the talk of new touches, the concepts underneath are the same. But I'm not complaining.

Tricks are as demanding as ever. The manual and revert options are there for advanced players to string together stunning combos, while beginners will enjoy seeing all the blood come out of Tony's face when he falls over. Which will happen often, as the game is exceptionally fast and seems so much quicker than previous Hawks. Which means either [a] I'm getting old and slow, or [b] the graphics are so smooth and unfailingly flawless that it just seems to be so much faster. Hopefully it's [b] for my sake. But don't worry all you old, slow people out there, the game comes with a training mode to steer you through the basics and dish out tips, while there's a nice track editor feature to create some gently undulating slopes and wheelchair ramps to practice in private. So no one (except for your little brother who nauseatingly sits next to you, awaiting his turn to play) can laugh at your pitiful attempts to do a FS Noseslide + FS Nosegrind + Corner Stomp + BS 50-50. Or something like that.

Although Tony 3 gives the player the chance to play the game on the internet, most gamers will probably just opt for the standard split-screen options for getting their multiplay. This is mostly due to the fact that to play it online, one needs an ethernet connection. Chances are that 95% of the world's gamers don't know what an ethernet is, how many fingers it's got or whether you can buy one in shops or capture them in the wild. So chances of having one are quite small.
Good job then that these split-screen games open up more possibility for fun group-play than a bottle of vodka, a coked-up donkey and a Twister mat.

Split-screen graphics are genuinely, honestly, 100 per cent identical to those found in the solo game, with no slowing, glitching, warping, phlanging, interphasing, linear quadrupling or bi-polar mincing to be seen.
Two-up game options are classic Hawk. Graffiti will keep you and a friend entertained for as long as there is electricity and humans haven't evolved away their thumbs. Trick Attack sees you battling for high scores over a set period of time, Horse is the same watch-and-beat one-on-one score challenge of old, while Slap! is a punch-the-opponent-off-his-board battle mode that takes a bit of getting used to and frankly even then it's not the best idea anyone's ever had. Stick with Graffiti, mate.

The game soundtrack contains The Ace of Spades by Motorhead. Forget GT3 with its prog-rock Muse and Brit-pop-by-numbers Feeder drivel, bugger WipEout Fusion and its soulless dance blandery and beat Grand Theft Auto 3's atmospheric film score about the head and body with a garden trowel - the music in Tony Hawk 3 is of the loud, 'so good you never get bored of hearing it' kind. After all, as the saying goes, a man who is tired of hearing The Ace of Spades is tired of life itself.

Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rollins Band, KRS One, The Ramones -it's a classy combination of heavy skate-rock, classic metal and quality old breakbeat. Plus there's Motorhead to prove that no matter how ugly you are or how many warts you've got on your face, you can pull chicks really easily if you're in a band.
Effects are good too. the board makes a gorgeous ker-thwack sound when making contact with the metallic half-pipe, almost as impressive as the ker-whunch made by your boarder's body when a landing goes awry. All in all, it's a rather finely tuned package.

So it looks good, sounds good, plays like a gift carried down from god between the moistened thighs of Kate Beckinsdale - so how come it doesn't get ten out of ten? Because I'm hard. Also because, underneath it all, despite previous assurances, it's the same game as Tony Hawk 1 & 2 on PSX. A few new missions, an internet link mode only about six people will ever try, better graphics, cooler tunes, new courses, more options, a track editor. Basically, it's the same as Tony has ever been. And recommendations don't come much higher than that.
It looks the business and plays in the superb Tony Hawk style of old. You don't need any innovations when a game's this good to play.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/21/03, Updated 01/23/03