Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

"Its good, its fun, but for me, its getting old"

Completely new career mode lets players choose the goals they want to accomplish. Challenge pros head-to-head to beat their best tricks, take off to a competition or just skate solo and conquer a gap.

Evolving levels change depending on the specific skater's goals and accomplishments. Enter a competition and extra ramps or rails appear. Players can toggle different skate elements on and off (quarterpipes, benches, kickers) to change up lines.

Players must make their way through the game as an amateur and then conquer a Pro Challenge based upon the skater's personal history to unlock the more difficult professional world. An entire set of Pro Goals has been added to test the most hardcore THPS disciple, adding incredible challenge and game depth to already expansive career mode.

Create yourself in the upgraded Create-a-Skater feature, now including scalable parts for more realistic looking skaters. Or create your dreampark in the enhanced Park Editor.

Players can skate as Tony Hawk or one of 13 other top pros. Choose from an ultimate team of street and vert skaters including Elissa Steamer, Chad Muska, Jamie Thomas, Rodney Mullen, Eric Koston, Steve Caballero, Andrew Reynolds, Rune Glifberg, Geoff Rowley, Bam Margera, Kareem Campbell, and Bucky Lasek. Plus, Bob's back! Brazilian favorite, Bob Burnquist, returns to the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater family.

Improved skater physics and animations now allow skating on moving objects, skitching behind cars, and performing spine transfers or leveling out to transition from a vert trick to a grind. The game also features more realistic balancing, bails, and board dynamics.

Graphics

When I loaded Tony Hawk 4, I expected to be amazed. After all, 3 looked pretty average compared to everything else at the time, and for a bunch of brand new Xbox owners it was a sign of ports to come. The reason I bring up THPS3 is because with a quick glance you really couldn’t see any major differences between it and THPS4, which isn’t a good thing. The detail in the levels is what you would expect, nothing over dramatic, but nothing so true to life you will forget this is a game. Textures are for the most part bland; nothing really stands out and catches the eye. It really looks more like the PS2 version then part 3 did, including low res textures, jaggies and all. Now don’t think it’s all bad, certain effects have gotten overhauls, like the water, spark effects from grinding, blood splatters, etc. The skater character models have remained mostly the same, but oddly they seem to look smaller, of course, that could be due to the fact that the levels are a lot bigger. The biggest change to the skater models is a semi damage system: knees and elbows will get scuffed up and bleed and you will see tears in the clothes that remain until your session is over. The downside to this is all that damage happens to the front of the skater, which you rarely ever get to see. Ambient character models still look as bad as ever with a very blocky appearance, and muddy textures straight out of a PSX game.

Animation has improved since THPS3, there are now more fall animations than before, which add to an overall smoother look and reduced clipping. Trick animations for the most part look the same, maybe a little smoother, but nothing that is going to pop out of the screen and smack you in the mouth.

Sound

Three cheers to Neversoft for giving us a real Dolby 5.1 mix in THPS4, it really adds to the immersion in the game. Tons of new sound effects have been added in this time around to reflect many of the new skating surfaces you encounter. Aside from the basic THPS fare of bumps and slams, the Xbox exclusive user soundtrack mode has been kept intact, but there is no track selector or easy way to get to the song you want when you want it. The built in soundtrack is also pretty standard, with a mix of Rock and Rap tunes that should please most, but certainly not all.

Game play

This area got the biggest change, there is no more beating the game with every character 1000 times just to unlock everything it has to offer, but beating Pro Challenge with everyone does have its benefits. When you fire up a level you’re basically in free skate mode until you go talk to someone, who presents you with a goal. When you start out, the goals will be pretty easy, collect combo, beat the high score, etc. As you get further into the game things get a bit harder. Did I say a bit? I meant to say hair pulling, controller heaving, “oh did I say” that kind of hard. When a goal is presented to you it may seem easy enough, but they that timer pops up with 5 seconds on it, and all you can do is hope you have the skills to make it.

Money plays a big part in this version too, cheats, clothes, boards, movies, skaters, and even the last two levels must be purchased. You earn money every time you complete a goal, or run into a money icon somewhere in the level.

New this year is the Spine Transfer, which basically lets you transfer from one side of a spine ramp to the other with ease, no more holding up! The Spine Transfer not only lets you do what its name says, but also lets you correct yourself, if you go off the side of a ramp just hit Black, or L & R and you will right yourself, and hopefully land on all four wheels. This enables you to continue your trick, instead of smashing your face into the ground like past games. Don’t forget the new ability to Skitch, for those that don’t know what that means I’ll explain. Basically “skitchin” is grabbing the back of a car and letting it take you for a ride, once you grab on a balance meter pops up, while not as hard to control as a manual it does present a challenge when the vehicle (or elephant?!) is moving at a high rate of speed and turning sharply.

Overall the game play is nice, but for some, [like me] it may be starting to get a little old. I was pumped when I got home and stuck the game into my Xbox, but 10 min into playing I couldn’t tell if I was playing 2 or 3, the patented formula is sadly, and quickly wearing thin. If Activision doesn’t space out the release of future versions a lot more, I’m afraid we will see another Tomb Raider legacy on our hands.

Controls

Nothing you haven’t seen before here, aside from the Spine Transfer, everything remains the same. The one thing I really hoped they would fix was collision detection when it comes to the controls. The worst offender in this case is Skitchin. All you’re supposed to do is come up behind the car, and hit up, but often times you will skate into it and bounce off which turns you the other way. If it wasn’t for the timer I wouldn’t mind it so much, but when the controls of the game interfere with an objective and go as far as causing you to lose I get a little peeved.

Overall

For all the Tony vets who started this journey in part 1, things may seem a little thin after a while. It might be time to just pack up and move on. For those that joined in a little late in the game, THPS4 is a great improvement over 3 in most areas. One last thing…where is online mode!? The PS2 version has it, so why doesn’t the Xbox?

Graphics 7
Sound 8
Gameplay 7.5
Control 7
Replay 8
OVERALL (not an average) 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/28/02, Updated 10/28/02