Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

"Another Tony Hawk GBA game, and another smash hit."

So far, every Tony Hawk game has been an extremely well made game. There has already been two Tony Hawk games released for the Gameboy Advance which have been huge successes. While this is the not the most original game, it does have a lot of great aspects about it.

All of the games in the Tony Hawk franchise follow a professional skater who travels to remote locations where they perform tricks and grinds. This isn’t an extremely original game, but it can still excel above almost all other games.

Visuals: Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 uses the same 3D/2D graphics engine as the previous Tony Hawk Gameboy Advance games. It uses a locked view that works very well for the Tony Hawk games. I’m not gonna lie to you, this view does take some getting used to. When you first start playing, the view seems to subtract from the fun, but as you keep playing, you get used to the view.

Sound: As in all Tony Hawk games, they have tried to integrate skateboarding songs into music. These music is quite good but it just doesn’t give you the same skateboarding feeling as it does on a TV’s speakers. Not that the sound isn’t high quality, but the music just doesn’t work well enough with the tiny speakers employed on the Gameboy Advance.

The sound effects are quite good, but they are nothing special. You can hear the skateboard’s wheels rolling across the pavements and the board grinding on rails but other than that, there are basically no other sounds that stick out. The sound is all of the Tony Hawk games is usually excellent but in THPS4, the sounds don’t live up to my expectations. I was expecting crisp, clear sound but instead, I got sound that, while good, isn’t as crisp and clear as I was expecting.

Gameplay: As in all Tony Hawk games, your main goal is to skate around the levels and try to complete obstacles in order to receive something in return. In THPS4 you are trying to collect money which can be collected either of two ways. Some of the objectives include: collecting S-K-A-T-E, perform a specific trick, pick up items lying around the level, or just score as many points as you can inside a time limit. They have also included the create-a-skater mode in THPS4 which is a very welcome addition.

In order to get new levels and stat points for your skater, you have to use money. You can either complete objectives to receive money or you can skate around the level and find money lying on the ground. After you complete an objective, it counts for all of the skaters so that you never have to redo the annoying challenges. All of the stat points you buy for your skaters, are used for all of the skaters so you almost always have enough money to buy access to the next level. You can also use money to buy new outfits for the skaters and even cheats for the game. Neversoft has gotten rid of the timer which was always an annoyance in the previous versions of Tony Hawk games. There is still some aspects of the timer in the levels, but each objective has a separate timer and you can retry these objectives as many times as you want.

In THPS4, you can be one of fourteen professional skaters. These skaters include such stars as: Tony Hawk, Rune Glifberg, Geoff Rowley, Elissa Steamer, and Chad Muska along with many other boarders. There are six skate parks in Tony Hawk and although they have been changed from the console versions, they still resemble the original levels. These levels have been expanded from any previous handheld Tony Hawk levels and all have unique aspects from the other versions of the levels.

Lasting Appeal: The lasting appeal has greatly improved from the last version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. There are six different skate parks to skate in and they are all quite big. Neversoft has also brought back the four-player link which is a big help to the lasting appeal of the game. In every level, there are also more objectives than ever before which greatly adds to the lasting appeal of the game.

Overall: Once again, Neversoft has created another great game. Tony Hawk has it all, the great graphics, some of the highest quality sound on the Gameboy Advance, and has great gameplay. Even without the four-player link, there is great lasting appeal. Any game that has the winning combination of those things has to be a great game. The bottom line is: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 is a must have for any fan of skateboarding games or anyone else that loves to play great video games.

Graphics - 8.9
Sound - 8.2
Gameplay - 9.3
Replay Value - 9.1
Final Score - 8.8

Information Box

Genre - Extreme Sports
Publisher - Activision
Developer - Neversoft Entertainment
Players - 1-4(with link cable)
Online Play - Not Supported
ESRB - T

Release Date
October 24, 2002

Overall Score: 8.8

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/30/02, Updated 11/30/02