Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD Review
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In recent years, the Tony Hawk franchise has hit hard times. With original developer Neversoft’s absorption into Activision some time ago, the franchise was put into the hands of fledgling developer Robomodo who debuted their work in 2009 with Tony Hawk: Ride, the series’ most abysmal failure to date. The game utilized a plastic skateboard peripheral a year or two after the peripheral craze had ended and coupled it with a subpar and flavorless skating game. I, like so many gamers out there, was excited to hear that the Tony Hawk franchise would be returning to its roots with the Robomodo-developed Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD, a collection of levels, skaters, and music from the series’ first two entries. Unfortunately, it seems that the curse of Robomodo has struck again.
With many remakes of this kind, one of the most important aspects tends to be the graphic overhaul. In this way, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD is fairly successful. The higher-resolution levels and especially character models look far better than the original games, especially the extremely aged Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1. Unfortunately, a number of unusual graphical and physics-related glitches also rear their ugly head on a fairly consistent basis.
On several occasions, I found myself staring through the walls of a level, flying off my board for absolutely no reason, not being able to jump after starting a level, not being able to move at all after starting a level, falling flat on my face when a trick should have easily landed and even having my skater launched into space from time to time. All of these different weird control errors and graphical glitches made for an extremely frustrating experience, one that I did not want to play for more than five to ten minutes at a time. Consistent and precise controls must be at the core of a good Tony Hawk experience and it simply isn’t present here.
In terms of gameplay, Pro Skater HD keeps the core mechanics of the original games. Left stick changes the direction of your skater while one button does grab tricks, another does grind tricks and another does flip tricks. The right analog stick does nothing here, replicating the lack of camera control found in the original. Each level contains a number of specific goals, things like high scores, doing specific tricks in specific locations, and finding hidden items. Once enough of these goals have been completed, the next level is unlocked.
In a collection of this kind, one of the most important aspects is the levels that have been included, especially since this is a complication of levels from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2, not a true remake. In this area, Pro Skater HD is a bit of a mixed bag. Some of classic levels like Factory and School II are present but they are put alongside a number of unusual picks like Hangar and Downhill Jam. Reportedly, Tony Hawk himself handpicked a number of the levels and demanded they be included. Downhill Jam is one such level, despite it being almost universally disliked by players and the fact that all of the series downhill levels always felt like a thought only half finished. Overall, the level list is relatively short and I only found myself excited to play roughly half of the few levels that are included. This is not the way to do a “Best of” compilation.
Music was always a vital component of the Tony Hawk franchise. I discovered many bands that continue to be some of my favorites to this day from the soundtracks of the series’ first three entries. In this department, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD can be somewhat commended. A number of songs from the original two games are in the game included Goldfinger’s “Superman,” a song that many consider to basically be the series’ theme song. Beyond that, new music by a number of up-and-coming bands has also been included and they fit well with the atmosphere of the game overall. Sadly, the total song count is so low and the game lacks any sort of music options (allowing you to turn on or off certain songs) that you’ll find yourself just turning the music off altogether during a longer play session simply because you will hear the same song over and over again so many times.
Multiplayer was never a series mainstay for me when it came to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, but it is present here and even includes a few new additions. Graffiti in which players trick on certain parts of the level to paint them a certain color and Trick Attack where players aim for the highest score in two minutes both make a return alongside the newcomer Big Head mode in which your head inflates over time and you must keep doing tricks to deflate it. The bigger the tricks, the more your head shrinks. Wait too long, it pops and you lose. While interesting, they are all essentially the same mode: do as many tricks as possible as quickly as possible within the time limit. The lack of local multiplayer here is a big mistake, as HD remakes such as this that play on nostalgia, should work to recreate most of the components of the original. My fond memories of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater multiplayer come from skating alongside a friend on my couch, not in a dark room over the internet. The multiplayer works well enough but is still plagued by the games many other unfortunate bugs.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD is an extremely disappointing product. While it looks better than the originals in many ways, the added problems caused by the Unreal Engine as well as the incredibly error-riddled physics engine make for a much more problematic gameplay experience. The controls, an absolute staple of the Tony Hawk franchise, are easily the most imprecise I have encountered in an HD remake. The game’s lack of trick features from the series’ strongest entry, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, mean that the combo system is still far from perfect. I found little, if any reason, to ever use grab tricks without the option to revert. Additionally, the lack of local multiplayer isn’t all that surprising in the modern game space but taking into consideration that this is a package looking to play mostly off nostalgia, it should be included.
If you are looking to get your Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater fix, find a copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 for original Xbox (the Xbox 360 will run it). It is a far better game, contains all the original music, and still controls perfectly.