The Birdman is back with remakes of two of the classic entries.
What Is It? Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 is, ostensibly, a remake of the two classic Tony Hawk games from the early 2000s. While I hold THPS2 as the crown jewel of the series, 3 and 4 both still hold up quite well today, so what does a remake offer?
The original THPS3 is a straightforward Tony Hawk game. There are nine levels, six of which give you a two minute timer and ten goals to complete. Completing some of these will open the next level, and so on. The other three levels are competitions where you get three one minute heats to score as many points as you can. You are given judge grades based on these runs, and the skater with the highest two out of three average wins the gold medal. Earn any medal to unlock the next level.
The remake perfectly recreates the nine levels from the original. There are some changes within levels, but they are all here and look, and play, wonderfully. You collect stat points as you go which allow you to increase the ability of your skater. The goals are mostly fairly straightforward, even the Sick score goals are mostly pretty simple for series veterans.
The original THPS4 switched the formula up by ditching the two minute runs in favor of free skating everywhere. You go out and find characters which present you with challenges, many of which have their own time limits, but are generally free to go anywhere in a level at any time.
The remake totally wipes out this new format and reverts to the same two minute, ten challenge run setup seen in the first three games. In doing so, they also changed the level list. They added three completely new levels while removing a few as well. This is divisive, to say the least. I’ll start by saying that the new levels are pretty good. Waterpark is a really great level with a ton of fun lines and a lot of wild grinds introduced through various waterslides. Movie Studio is a competition level and flows well, with many rails to connect the various spots. A good bit of verticality and fun visuals make this a nice package. Pinball is the final level, it’s a gimmick where you are miniaturized and skating inside of a pinball machine. You can even look up to see giant Tony Hawk playing! This is the worst of the new levels to me, as it’s a bit too gimmicky, the lines aren’t fantastic and there aren’t many great vert spots.
Along with the new and removed levels, a few of the classics were remade. Zoo and Kona were turned into competition levels. Kona works pretty well in this case, but Zoo does not feel nearly the same in this form.
On top of the standard game modes, the game features online play, speedruns, create-a-park, and free skate. These are all fun, but I’ll give a special shout to speedruns which have you seeing how fast you can complete all ten challenges in a level. There are global leaderboards but people have figured out how to cheat those, the record for Foundry is currently under two seconds.
Additionally, if you complete all ten challenges in every level across both games, and earn gold in all competition levels, you will unlock a set of pro challenges. There are five of these in each normal level and they follow a similar pattern. The competition levels are given one specific challenge. As you might expect, these challenges are much tougher and, along with some in-game side-objectives, provide a lot of material for completionists out there. There are extra game modes to find after that, but I’ll leave those for you to discover.
The game plays great, with the familiar control scheme that will have returning players feeling right at home from the start. I have seen occasional glitches such as falling through a wall or a spine transfer that seemingly should have landed up didn’t, but these have been few and far between for me.
The Best Part: The new levels. They aren’t perfect, but they are pretty darn good and more than enough to make me want this dev team to get the chance at making a completely new entry next rather than moving on to remake the Underground games. Waterpark and Movie Studio demonstrate good normal and competition levels. While I don’t love Pinball, I appreciate the willingness to try something a bit silly.
The Worst Part: This really is not a true representation of THPS4. Love or hate the changes that were made, you cannot argue that this is simply a different game. Some of the decisions on levels to change or drop weren’t great as well.
The Verdict: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 is a fantastically fun game. It does not faithfully represent all of the source material, but it does provide an excuse to play dozens of hours playing Tony Hawk. The controls are nearly perfect, the game looks great, the soundtrack is massive and varied (yes, the iconic “Ace of Spades” makes its return!), and the game is simply a blast to play. The game mode list here is impressive and has something for everyone.
We all need a bit more arcade action in our gaming lives these days, and THPS 3+4 is a wonderful excuse to do so.
How to Play: PlayStation 4/5*, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch 1/2, PC
*console played on for this review
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