Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 +...

Following the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 remake, another pair of classic skateboarding games got a fresh new look, bringing modern refinements to an old-school formula. Some of the changes are fantastic, whereas some others take away from the originals, resulting in a flawed but overall fun experience.

Conquer the parks with your skating skills

Exactly like the original games, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 lets you take control of one of a few dozen skaters old and new and lets you show off your skating prowess across 17 parks. The average run is structured as a timed two-minute “mission,” where you try to complete as many goals and get as many points as possible.

Successful runs are those where you complete enough to unlock the following park, or those that put you higher on the public leaderboard. Progression in other parts of the game (new cosmetics, secret content, etc.) also relies on good runs, which can sometimes take a while given the two-minute structure.

Though it sounds repetitive, it’s actually quite fun to try and see the number go up and pull off some wild and awesome tricks.

New engine, better graphics, confusing decisions

With the games running on a new engine, they certainly feel better to play. The optimization on PC is great, the graphics look nice, and the skating experience is visceral and responsive. Alongside the new sound engine comes awesome SFX and engineering, making each achievement, cleared goal, or high score a much more satisfying experience.

The soundtrack also enjoys the benefits of new tech. Whether you’re listening to the heaviest metal, 2000s emo music, or something entirely different, the devs made sure that you do not get a subpar streaming-level experience. Speaking of the soundtrack, the songs included are so good that I found myself keeping the game open just to listen to them. The quality of the sound and the track itself seem to have been quite the focus of the devs this time around.

What seems not to have been the focus is keeping the original vibes intact. Whereas Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 appears to be quite close to the original game, many features of THPS 4 are missing. Its career mode is nowhere to be found, free roam is absent, and its structure is now the same two-minute challenge run of the other games.

The new collection went in a unifying direction, essentially porting THPS 4‘s levels into the gameplay of this new Tony Hawk experience, reducing THPS 4 to the size of a map expansion rather than a full remake.

Varied levels and goals keep you engaged for a long time

All the parks in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, freshly refined and expanded, are highly diverse and engaging, with their respective goals giving the player a reason to come back to them time and again.

Even when you clear every single goal on all the parks, you will unlock Pro Goals, additional, more difficult challenges for each map that, once again, give you enough to do on the parks to come back to them once more.

What I do have to say about the overall goals and challenges is that some are either too difficult or too easy. I spent more time than I’d like to admit on some of them, while others I completed without even meaning to, leading to a lack of gameplay satisfaction. It isn’t that those certain challenges are too hard per se, but rather the game’s sporadic bugginess prevents them from being fun whatsoever (cough, secret tapes, cough).

Overall, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 pair of remakes does a lot of good stuff, opening up the world of skating, expanded and improved, to a brand-new audience. Whether you were born yesterday or have been a THPS veteran for decades, you’ll surely find something in this game that is to your liking, even if you end up having a bone to pick with how THPS 4 was treated.

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