"Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3" - Nintendo Gamecube

Ah, Tony Hawk, the man who was once a skating legend and is now living an eternal life of people mistaking him for a guy who looks like or has the name of Tony Hawk but is not Tony Hawk. And also, ah, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, the famous PS1 hit that introduced lots of kids to their favorite college rock. And maybe, Tony Hawk.

Anyway, so this is the third one of those. Up to this point, they were developed by Neversoft, the company you may know as the one with that weird slithering eyeball logo. That's how I remember them, anyway. They mostly are known for developing the Tony Hawk games, but they also developed Spider-Man (a PS1 favorite of mine), and more recently, developed Call of Duty: Ghosts before being merged with Infinity Ward and then being made defunct.

Apparently Pro Skater 3 shares the title with Grand Theft Auto III for highest rated PS2 game of all time on Metacritic, and the magazine "Next Generation" ranked as the 14th-highest selling PS2 game of all time, selling 2.1 million copies. It also earned a perfect 10 score on GameSpot, one of only 15 games to ever receive such a score.

Wow. Let's play this masterpiece, already.

Tony Hawk sure is choosing some questionable outfits these days.

----- Playthrough -----

You know, when I said Dave Mirra's Freestyle BMX 2 was basically just a Tony Hawk game I didn't realize how right I was. What we have here is basically that game, but better executed.

It almost feels aimless to really re-describe the main loop of that game, but here goes: in Pro Skater 3 you play as an up and coming skater who has to visit a variety of locations and do a bunch of tricks and other things for I guess just, like, the WORLD to enjoy. Because I don't know who is grading you on whether or not you've completed these things but I'm going to guess just everyone is watching and waiting.

For who? Myself? Canada? Is this a matter of national concern?

Before we get into that though, we can talk about the game's create-a-skater feature. It's exactly what it sounds like, and allows you to create a surprisingly vast array of flat-faced Gamecube-era Tony-Hawk-a-likes to enjoy the game is. I tried to create a serious one, and then immediately went and hit randomize a bunch of times to see what I could get to come up.

This is 110% my guy.

Anyway, tyedye shirt in hand, I set off to learn about the game. Much like Freestyle BMX (which to be fair is a rip-off of this game instead of the other way around), you have a main trick button which works in conjunction with directions to produce different tricks, and instead of a trick modifier button, you have a hold trick button. This means you can either do some kind of fancy hold, or you can do some sort of kick-flip-style trick, but not both in conjunction (obviously).

Other than that, you have basic controls for accelerating forwards, jumping (ollie with A), and a grind button (Y). The only other button of particular importance is a feature that is new to Pro Skater 3, called the "revert," which is achieved by pressing R when dropping back down a ramp from a jump. The point of this is that if you instantly go into a manual (by flicking the stick up-down, or vice versa), your score will continue building as a combo from whatever tricks you were doing.

Yeah, I know that didn't make any sense but trust me, it's not that confusing if you play it.

So anyway, back to the challenges: usually there are around 9 or so in each level and a few are predictable-- get X score is usually three of the challenges, then find all the letters "S-K-A-T-E" around the level, then find the hidden video-tape. The other challenges are specific to the level and involve things in the environment, like doing a particular trick in some location, or causing something to happen (for instance splashing water on the foreman in the industrial plant level).

This 35 ft 50-50 grind is for America, you commie bastards.

Anyway, to be fair I don't know what happens when you complete all the levels because I quit once I felt I'd seen what I needed to, not to fall into the trap of playing the game for a week again. I imagine that there's probably nothing so mind-blowing or insane that I absolutely need to experience to write this article though.

Let me know if I'm wrong, I'll finish the game and write more on request (I will).

----- Impressions -----

How long did I play?

2 hours.

How much did I beat?
I finished the challenges in 3 levels and felt I got the gist.

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Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

There's an in-game tutorial that teaches you everything you need to know to play the game so this category gets invalidated, but I was able to mostly figure everything out just by tinkering around anyway; though not how to chain combos correctly.

Gameplay: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel? Too difficult?

Maintaining combos and avoiding crashing is hard but not impossible. I'd say the game is reasonably difficult for sure. It feels rewarding to pull of a long combo mostly because they are fairly difficult to do without bailing. You'll have to do plenty in a row to get the good scores on some levels.

Depth: 

How deep is the game?

There's a decent amount of tricks in the game and variety, and the game encourages you to do different tricks because the value drops if you do the same tricks repeatedly, so that would be depth, but really there doesn't seem to be any reason to favor certain tricks over others and I found myself just randomly doing ones I knew I hadn't done yet for points.

Presentation: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

The sound of the game is as-expected, all the skateboard sounds seem fairly realistic to me, and there's the groaning and skeleton crunches of your guy folding into a pretzel when bailing from a 70 ft drop to look forward to.

These guys get up and walk it off after skidding twenty feet on their face.

The music in the game is all licensed so it's hard to give credit, but they have some pretty good picks. It's the kind of stuff you'd expect (hip-hop, college rock).

Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

I can't say I'm crazy for this whole genre considering how quickly I bailed (haHA) on this particular game, but I liked some of the music. Other than that, there's not much here that appeals to me on a personal level.

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

If you like these kinds of games this is a surefire win. This game didn't get such good scores without being something decent. I think if you've played a Tony Hawk game, you already know what you're getting yourself into, and have a good idea of whether or not you'll like it without me having to tell you.

If you haven't played one and are just curious: yeah, it's fun. I don't think it deserves to be on my favorites list just because I didn't finish it and I didn't like it THAT much, but that's due to my personal biases and I think looking at it objectively, it would be fun for most people. So go nuts!

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