My enjoyment of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skate 4 (THPS4) was associated with a certain period of time so I appreciate that your enjoyment of this game might not match mine. In 2002 I loved pop-punk, ska, approachable hip-hop, giggled like an idiot to the antics of the Jackass crew and generally loved skate culture. However, an important factor in appreciating skate culture was the actual skateboarding which required more balance and bravery than I possessed. Having never skated further than five metres in my lifetime I always felt like something was missing. Fortunately, for wobbly cowards like me the Tony Hawk’s series fulfilled my ambitions.
Critical consensus has the series peaking with number 3 and the series’ debut on Playstation 2, but number four was the game for me. Dispensing of the strict structured time limits that had been a feature of the series, THPS4 opted for a free-roaming environment with each challenge having an individual timer. This allowed for either more in-depth challenges or shorter time limits to ramp up difficulty for other tasks. In addition Neversoft went wild with their event scripting creating some of the wackiest, most challenging and most fun tests yet. Memorable tasks included protecting an escaped elephant from being recaptured in central London and helping a convict escape Alcatraz (almost forty years after it closed.) The latter task was a prime example of what the new quick restart option was invented for, requiring practise and a bit of luck to pull off but surely impossible to successfully implement under the old game model. The game is also freed from the old structures’ limitations which greatly enhanced the variety of challenges on display. The old classics like high scores and collecting SKATE return but each level has enough individuality and variation in its gameplay to really stand out.
Their imagination of the developers stretched even further in level design, where freed from the restrictions of a two-minute time limit they set about crafting the most impressive in-depth levels the series had seen. Levels also no longer seemed constructed with fairly obvious lines that players would need to hit to reach the high, pro and sick scores. Collectables are hidden all over the place and the new feature of adding in obstacles for certain challenges (including a set of floats for a parade themed mission) amplified the variety of gameplay options. The addition of spine transfers to the already solid move system also gave greater freedom on score runs. This edition marked the perfect balance between ease of scoring and the complexity in combo generation. The post THPS4 caveman controls created a fundamental imbalance leading to cheap poorly flowing scoring opportunities that the series never quite managed to resolve. However, returning to previous versions had me searching for spine transfers or reverts to stretch a few more points out of my combos.
For all the improvements that had made it the best in the series so far, my main memory of this game is simply the sheer fun of playing it. From Tony Hawk’s Underground (THUG) onwards the Tony Hawks’ games took a slight deviation towards more realism in the presentation (emphasis on slight). Crazy stunts were still pulled but even this was hindered by a greater interest in plotting over having fun for the hell of it. As the ambition and scope of the games grew and the series matured so did the antics (slightly again). I was still looking to skitch an elephant or obsessively trying to master the snake run on Kona while the series was moving on to cinematic cutscenes with fully integrated storylines. I was looking to pull off a ‘one-wheel fireworks show’ or hit a ‘human dart’ whilst the series was developing new peripherals to make playing the game more realistic. I don’t want realism if I could skate I would but as I outlined above I am terrible at skating. That was why I spent the summer of 2003, mostly indoors, listening to Goldfinger (the band not Shirley Bassey) and playing this game. The early games in the series had a perfect representation of the design mantra ‘Easy to learn, difficult to master’. Anyone could pick up the controls of a Tony Hawk’s skating game, pull off a cool move and score a few points. With perseverance the game could make you feel like a god hitting impossibly long combos, nailing tricks over office blocks and performing superhuman feats. Nowhere was this better represented than in THPS4 and no other game in the series gave you such a good opportunity to show your skills off.
Rory's Retrospectives 