Tony Hawks Pro Skater 5 Review

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5

 

 

IT’S BACK!! The iconic franchise of combo driven, button mashing skateboarding is back and has brought us a fresh look to the already unique games. Tony Hawk’s new pro skater game takes you into a new variety of levels and gives us fresh new characters to rip them apart with!

This game definitely takes me back to the PS1 days when playing it, from the ultimate combos and highscores from reverts to manuals to the old cartoonish look that is classic THPS (Tony Hawk’s pro skater). I don’t think this game has ever been known for it’s ultimate realistic graphics and ultra realistic skateboarding but, I feel the game has improved in graphics from the old THPS which you would expect in 13 years haha! Though I do feel that it hasn’t improved much from the looks of it’s last arcade title on the Xbox 360 “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD”

The soundtrack is classic Tony Hawk, Rock, pop and punk music which gives you that old school skateboard feel. They have done well at capturing the sounds of grinding, reverts and certain flips and tricks but, I feel in this type of unrealistic, over the top game it wouldn’t really matter too much even though they have done well!

I don’t know about you but, when I start up any Pro skater game the first thing I do is look into the characters I can use to smash all of the challenges. In this game they have given you the option to either use pro skaters such as, Tony and Riley Hawk, Chris Cole, Andrew Reynolds, Leticia Bufoni, Lil Wayne (yes the rapper is making an appearance) and more or… you can create your own skater using custom character cards to create crazy and cool combos.

The character customisation isn’t how most of us would like it, where you can make a skater that looks just like you, an awesome haircut, backwards cap and for me a big old beard but, they have brought us the weird and wonderful instead! With THPS5 you can create a custom character from unlocking specific cards by leveling up and completing certain milestones and missions. I do mean cards when I say cards, as you can see in the below image we have attached you only get the freedom to pick a specific head, body/outfit and a board. For myself i think it goes well with the “over the top” style of THPS games but, I definitely think i’d rather create a guy that looks like myself, I feel this lets the game down a bit.

When you have decided who you would like to use out of the skaters given, you can go into the customise menu which will give you 4 tabs to flick through, Stats, Skater, Emblems and bests. These tabs allow you to view certain attributes, trick variations and customise the look of your skater.

Stats

Whilst in the stats tab you get to upgrade your skaters stat points to specific attributes such as, speed, ollie, grind, manual etc. you can gain stat points by completing missions and challenges throughout the game and leveling up as you go, as well as your stats being in the stats tab, you can also view the variations of the tricks your skater does so for example, Tony Hawk can do a kickflip from “left on the d-pad and X” but, someone else could have it set to another control. You can toggle between, grabs, flicks and lip tricks using the “Y” button.

Skater

In the skater tab you get to change the alternative outfits that your pro skater can wear or, you can press “Y” whilst in the skater tab to switch between your pro and your customised skater so you can change the head, body/outfit and board that you want to use when in freeskate.

Emblems

The only reason I believe they have added the emblems into the game is to give you something when you unlock certain milestones during the game, for example you can gain them from doing a total of 250,000 tricks or just completing a very long 300 metre manual. The emblems are really just pictures of pro skating sponsors and cool cartoon pictures that give you cool bragging rights to your friends whilst skating online.

Bests

The bests tabs give you your milestones and information of the completion of the game, for example, time played, amount of bails, longest grinds etc.

So now into the game, once you have explored the characters, created your own dude or dudette you can hit the parks/streets. THPS5 have included 8 new levels for you to shred and complete including, The Berrics, Bonfire Beach, School III, Mega Park, Rooftops, The Bunker, Asteroid Belt and Mountain. To unlock each level you have to collect a total of 15 mission stars in the previous level.

“Yep thats right they have brought back Create-a-

park to THPS5”

On the other hand… if you feel you can do better and give the developers a run for their money, yep thats right they have brought back Create-a-park to THPS5. I was very excited to see how this compared to the classic American Wasteland, which was the last Tony Hawks to have a create-a-park aspect back in 2005! So if like me you like to get creative and give your friends some awesome parks to shred then get uploading! You get to choose from 4 templates, Beach, Skatepark, School and Warehouse ranging from small, medium or large. to have the ultimate freedom I would suggest to use the warehouse just because, it is an empty area, no extra ramps already included.

Robomodo and Disruptive games have done well to give us over 250 objects to rotate, flip and combine to create epic skate parks with your own little twist. You can start with huge Centerpieces, ramps of all sizes, rails and ledges that can be put anywhere and even the smaller details like street props that will give you the ultimate creative ability. Most of the objects you can place have multiple “skins” which allow you to change the material and colour of the object you’re placing. There could have been improvements to this game mode such as, adding a guideline grid to allow you to make your parks symmetric without trouble and also, giving you the ability to move multiple items at once which would let you move a certain ramp box that you have custom made!

Every level still has the old school free skate challenges we all know and love like collect S.K.A.T.E, complete the COMBO, collect the DVD & VHS and also have included a new collectable where you have to smash Swag crates that are scattered around each level (these challenges each give you 1 Mission star for completion). This is also an advantage of making your own park, you get to place these ANYWHERE to make it hard for your friends to collect them!

Instead of skating around completing various goals in a time limit to progress a career THPS5 has introduced a new free skating aspect with the choice of completing certain missions to grant you access to new levels and areas to skate. The missions are based around the the same 10 challenges but, all have a difference in cool names and difficulty. Each mission has an amatuer, pro and sick completion level with alters how many mission stars you gain to unlock new levels, how much money you receive to customise your skater and how much exp you collect to level up and unlock new items.

“to stop your head from exploding… yes exploding”

Some of my favourite missions are, Bighead score timer, you have to keep scoring points to stop your head from exploding… yes exploding, you do this and see how long you can keep your head a normal size! Balls out of a bowl, you have huge beach balls that you have to push out of a skate bowl in a certain time limit and another favourite is the Ice cream delivery missions, where you have to collect floating ice cream icons around the level and deliver them to a certain point.

Some of the missions give you the option to play in multiplayer where you can go up against your mates and compete for the highest combo, highest trick and see who’s the best at balancing on the longest grinds. Other than that the game supports 20 players online in one session, so you can sit back and watch other skaters shred all over the place or get involved yourself and show off. I will admit, it does get a bit manic and can seem a bit much with loads of random people getting in your way.

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