Thrasher Presents: Skate and Destroy

"way better than anything else from a skater's view"

In my opinion thrasher is the best skating game out so far, surpassing Grind Session and Street Sk8er easily, and yes ever better than tony hawk 1 AND 2, which too many people have said is the greatest game of all time. I've played all the games extensively and can seriously tell you that the one I am most likely to go play is Thrasher. Why? Keep reading....

Graphics 7.5/10
The graphics are nothing special, they're pretty simple actually. They're low resolution and all the graphics are sort of dark looking. Most of the animations look really good, but there are a few tricks that just look bad (frontside blunts and boardslides). However, the good part of low res graphics is that the game runs extremely smooth. It keeps a really steady, relatively high frame rate all the time except for a few places in the game, like the Venice pit where theres lots of detailed graffiti for example. The game also intentionally slows down the graphics when you fall but they can be pretty funny to watch so it's not a bad thing. Also, this game is the first with nollie animations (where a nollie heelflip looks different from a heelflip, and so on)Overall, they certainly are functional and above average but not the highest calibur the playstation can offer. Also, as a final note, what the hell is up with all the sparks in skating games? Literally every game has them and unless you are riding steel trucks grinding a flint (or whatever rock it is) rail, sparks are not a normal thing...

Sound 9/10
Sound in a skating game isn't too difficult: you should hear your wheels rolling, when you pop the board, when you're grinding...as i said not too complex. However this game really goes above and beyond average. There's lots of background urban city noises in places like New York and in the final contest level there's crowd noise all the time and echos when you skate, just like at a big indoor skatepark. The skaters all sound different when they fall too. It's just little details like that that make a game stand out always. The music is all old school rap, with songs from people like Gang Starr, Kool Keith (his 2nd skating game song, Blue Flowers by Dr. Octagon, an alias of his, is in Grind Session), Sugarhill Gang, A Tribe Called Quest, and lots more. Personally I feel this collection of music is how skating is best represented in a game...the only way it could be improved is if they had new underground hip hop (THPS 2 actually had some really good underground stuff...Styles of Beyond, and one song had Mos Def featured, those are both really good hip hop). If you don't like hip hop then you won't like the music in this game though...

Control 10/10
Control in this game is almost completely perfect. This is the perfect skating controls. In all other games, you ollie then kickflip or hardflip or whatever. In this game, theres an ollie button, but if you want to do a flip trick you push only the flip trick button and a directon and it's automatically done...this way is better otherwise everything is technically late in being executed (so it's not actually a kickflip, it's a lateflip). The same thing also applies with spinning. Also, the speed of the game is realistic, although it is a tiny bit slow. You can adjust your speed exactly to what you need. If you want to go slow so you can pull some techy ledge trick you aren't completely solid on you can, but you can also go really fast to clear sets and gaps. This is one of the biggest advantages of this game: speed is handled realistically. There are a few issues...you can't do fronstide flips or any flips trick with a 180 out of a grind...you can't do nollie flip tricks out of grinds...and you can't go to fakie without doing a half a 180 (the kind where you hold down circle and left or right) into a trick and sometimes this doesnt' look good. However with this sort of hidden trick you can now do even more tricks like fs tailslide 270 out, or bs bluntslide kickflip out to fakie. Even with the errors listed here I would still consider the control scheme pretty close to completely perfect.

Gameplay 10/10
There isn't really a story..just something like you skate, and want to become pro, so you do. the end. Not that a skating game needs a story. In each level, you get a score to beat, and if you beat it and escape the cops that come when your time runs out, you advance to the next level. every few levels there is a contest where theres no cops, but if you fall you lose 500 points. If you win contests, you get sponsors such as Alien Workshop, Independent, Volcom, DVS shoes, and lots more, which you pick yourself. Also another really cool feature of the game is that after each level you learn new tricks, like at the beginning you can't do 360 flips or noseblunts or crooks but you can do stuff like kickflips, tailslides more basic tricks. Everyone also has one unique trick which are usually pretty cool, for example darkslides, double kickflips, and impossibles are a few of the unique tricks. The skaters are all pretty different, for instance there is a tech skater who isn't very fast and doesn't have much landing ability meaning he won't be good for sets and gaps, but he has big balance skills so he'll be at home on normal sized ledges and be able to pull flip tricks in and out of grinds easily. There's about 8 abilities in all like grind balance, ollie power, spinning speed, and so on.

Replay value 10/10
This is where the game shines. Between my friend owning the game and me owning the game, I've been playing since around christmas of 1999, and I'm still playing it more than any other game. I got THPS 2 the day it came out, september 20, and already I'm bored with it because it's too easy. This game is seriously challenging, but it is one of the most rewarding games I've ever played. i can pull any trick pretty much on command within a few tries, but i still have to think about what I'm doing or else I'll mess up...very similar to real skating (except I can't pull just ANY trick on command). Just a week or two ago I learned two new tricks in the game (hardflip fs crooks, switch hardflip bs tailslide), because before I didn't realize where to look for a small enough ledge to pull them on without using kickers. There's also two difficulty levels, with one being hard and the other being really hard. Learning the easier of the two is definetely recomended otherwise you'll be completely overwhelmed and probably will hate the game.

Overall 10/10
Yeah most people will like Tony Hawk 2 better, but for people who are really in to skating (I've skated 3 or 4 years) and who also are into video games, this is probably the best choice. It has so much replay value that almost all the other faults in the game can be ignored. This is my personal favorite game of all time...i only hope they make a thrasher 2 (probably not because this didn't sell too well i think).

rent or buy
I actually would recomend renting it first because not everyone will like it, but keep in mind that it takes time to get good enough at the game so that you can really know what you're doing.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/14/00, Updated 11/14/00