When I was growing up, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was one of the few video games based on the X Games lineup that I could get into. Not even Dave Mirra or Shaun White’s video game offerings appealed to me the same way that trying to nail a 900 in-game felt. While most of my time was spent on the very first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, I enjoyed the third title in addition to the Underground titles later on for the PlayStation 2. Now, Activision and Iron Galaxy Games are bringing back the remaining PlayStation 1 entries into a new console generation, bringing something familiar to me while introducing an entire game of content I had never played before in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4.
While the story modes are gone from the latter half of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, the collection offers more than just the chance at 120 seconds of greatness. Yes, the two-minute sessions are the core focus, but they can just as easily be extended out to three or four minutes or an endless run that tracks the highest combo. There are also a handful of gameplay mods and accessibility options that can help players nail some of those pro goals hidden away in each level (and once you finish the initial set, each level looks like it has five or six additional hidden objectives). Who knows, you might even be able to nail the snake run on Kona after all these years. And with Bam Margera back on the roster, I’ve yet to see if his shopping cart run is back in Alcatraz along with the other skater-specific Pro goals.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4’s biggest change in the hands-on preview, beyond the obvious exclusion of the free-form career mode from THPS4, is backporting all the gameplay and mechanical changes from the fourth numbered entry back into THPS3. This means grind extensions, leveling out, and even skitching are all on the menu for Foundry and Airport. It consolidates the two numbered entries into a single launcher and menu, combining both games into a $49.99 package. Activision tipped us off about some of the other brand-new features coming to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, including new modes like Photo Mode and HAWK, but also the ability to create custom goals in Create-a-Park. However, I wasn’t able to check all of these out, given our limited time to get hands-on.
Activision claims the soundtrack for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 is returning in all its glory. However, during this brief hands-on session, they had us play through the game in their new Streamer Mode, replacing the licensed tracks with some royalty-free tracks that won’t get content ID’d if you upload footage of your million-point tricks on YouTube. The new tunes, while charming in their unique way, don’t hype the player up in the same way that Bodyjar and CKY did all those years ago.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, much like the inaugural 1+2 collection, modernizes both titles into a two-minute speed run with a whole slew of challenges and Pro Goals as well as unlockables for each of the varied skaters to play as. Returning faces might not look the same as you remember (Bam Margera being the most noticeably different), while newcomers to the field of skateboarding from the past five years also join the roster. Activision gave us a sneak peek at some of their guest characters as well, including the already-announced Doom Slayer for owners of the Digital Deluxe Edition, as well as Michaelangelo (I’ll always remember this turtle with the extra A) from the more recent TMNT reboots. Iron Galaxy Games hasn’t stopped there, as they have also introduced a couple of new parks in over a decade for a Tony Hawk game.
In preparation for my thirty-minute hands-on session with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, I got to watch one of their resident pros try to rack up ten million points on every level, and this time was at THPS3’s Airport. His Create-a-Skater with full stats was able to link escalator hops and other tricks together to create insane combo modifiers before even reaching the main concourse with the long grindable rails and flags to collect. I noticed that he kept on using Michaelangelo’s new Shell Spin trick to help keep his momentum and continue the combo in between rails instead of relying on manuals and reverts.
During my time watching this master of the Xbox controller, I did notice that the engine itself had a few oddities brought into it from Iron Galaxy Games’ transition of the engine with some objects colliding with the player far more frequently than one would anticipate and being able to jump up from a lower grind rail up fifteen feet to the rails above with a combination of air tricks and wall rides. These quirks were what kept me from seeing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 as much of a 1:1 interpretation as the first duology, but at the same time, I feel players will quickly grasp the nuances and quirks of the engine as they compete on the leaderboards. While Vicarious Visions isn’t handling this collection, Iron Galaxy Games did have a hand with the first pair of THPS titles as they handled the PC port.
While Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 launches next month on July 11th, players won’t have to wait that long to get their hands on it. Microsoft is about to reveal during their Xbox Games Showcase that players who pre-order the game, as well as select Game Pass subscribers, will get access to the Foundry demo (which also includes THPS4’s College), allowing players to tackle the park with both Tony Hawk himself and newcomer/Olympic gold medalist Rayssa Leal. If you pre-ordered the Digital Deluxe Edition, the Doom Slayer is also playable in this demo.
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