Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

"Hawk really soars in THQ's latest creation."

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 stars on the GC and PS2, and has always been a standard of excellence for other skateboarding sports games. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 makes its debut today on the Game Boy Advance...and fails miserably to disappoint.

If you have been hiding under a rock in the sports gaming world, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is generally a skateboarding sports game, where you can make your player, the skateboarder, execute all kinds of tricks (without the pain of falling yourself) on the skateboard such as grabs, flips, ollies, nollies...the list is inexhaustible. Compared to its elder brother, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, THPS 3 stars better graphics, better gameplay, bigger levels, and other things to boast.

THPS 3 still retains the fun of executing big moves and flashy stunts which, most of the time, bag you loads of points. To help the beginners along, a much more comprehensive pause menu in-game provides a trick list along with the steps to execute them. I spent much time practicing the wall ride and finally mastered it with ease due to the trick list. It is an excellent notion, and I am glad THQ put it in.

THQ has now introduced textures into the players' 3-D models, injecting new life and fluidity into their motions.

Altogether now: ''WOOOOOOOOWWW!''

Each player now has snappy new pants and shirt, and better modelling has smoothened parts of the skaters. There is little flaw in the skaters' look, save for a little bit of blurriness due to the limits of the GBA, as well as its screen size.

Gamers of THPS have always demanded more dynamic and bigger stages. THQ supplies just that with plenty of new features in each stage, as well as a load of things you can interact with. In some of the stages, there is more than one level in the stage: ''Foundry'', for example, has an elevator which you can use to ride all the way to the second, much higher floor! The stages are significantly bigger most of the time and gamers will easily spend oodles of time in the Free Skate Mode just exploring the marvelousness of the stage creation. Well done THQ.

THPS 3's sound complements its excellent graphics, fluid motion and big stages very well. Most of the time, the music is pounding, which accompanies the fast and furious tricks and grabs your skater does. Yet, as compared to THPS 2, it is nothing much of a kick skyward, because the music has always been close to a pounding beat in many THPS games. However, repetitive as it may be, it never really gets boring to listen to once in a while. The sound effects are what captured my ear: shouts of agony from the skaters if they bumped into a wall, had a big, terrible fall down several slopes and kissed the floor very hard at the end, or just tumbled off their board. The skateboards themselves thump with that familiar fiberglass and plastic sound, and they emit a higher-pitched sound when grinding against a lip or a rail.

Replay value is a major factor in THPS 3. More moves have been introduced into the players, and you will be pretty busy for a while trying out the various moves and stunts a skater can pull. There are a thousand and one combos you can pull off on the various skaters, and there are numerous secrets hidden well in every level. Also, THQ has thrown in a spanking new create-a-skater mode. It is not much - you have only one custom skater of which you can alter his outfit, complexion, shoes etc. - but it is a step in the right direction.

Finally, we get to the beef of the game - the multiplayer. It is what makes THPS 3 a huge moon-step away from THPS 2. Up to four players have have a go in several gameplay modes like King of the Hill, in which you must go for the player with a special object and take it from him, as well as a Point Mode, which is simply skating for more points...kind of like a deathmatch for the sports genre. You will spend hours with your friends competing to see who is the best among all of you in THPS 3 - there is more than meets the eye besides the single player mode.

What I found most annoying, though, was the fact that it was hard to tell where EXACTLY the skater was in relation to the stage's objects, apart from shadows. The stages are big, but in no way 3-D, and thus the perspective at which you view the player at is fixed. I would make a leap of faith towards a rail, and instead fall a full story down to land onto the cruel pavement below. 4000 points gone (in my case).

But other than that grunt, I would have to agree that THQ is reaching closer and closer towards the apparent asymptote of THPS perfection. The stage have become bigger and may change in some ways provided you fulfills certain objectives, the multiplayer mode offers hours of hard skating with your friends, and the custom skater mode offers, to a limited extent, a better expression of what you like. THPS 3 is, indeed, a roaring success of THQ's on the GBA.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 03/09/02, Updated 03/09/02