The impossibly perfect landing of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2
Image: Screenshot: Activision Games Features For Our Consideration
No piece of media, no matter how technically accomplished or creatively satisfying, can ever really be “perfect.” Even if something has no recognizable faults, it’s absurd to think that it can’t be improved in any way whatsoever. What happens if something else comes along that’s better? Is it more perfect? Does the first thing then become less perfect? That’s to say nothing of the inherent subjectivity of critique, meaning that “perfect” to one person’s eyes might inevitably not be “perfect” to someone else.
So it should be taken with an absolutely massive grain of salt—and complete disregard for any experience I may have as a professional critic—when I say that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is absolutely perfect. In terms of background, I should note that I loved the Tony Hawk games back when they were new, as everyone who played them did, because they were extremely fun and massively popular. (I also played and wrote about all of them, even the awful ones, for a now-defunct sports game site.) But what the developers at Vicarious Visions—previously best known for the shockingly good Game Boy Advance ports of the Tony Hawk games, taking over for original series creators Neversoft—have done here isn’t just a mechanically competent re-creation of a pair of video games that are now over two decades old. It’s also the perfect modern update to those first two Tony Hawk games, coming at the perfect time, and handled with the perfect level of respect that the series and its long-suffering fans deserve.
When I sat down to play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 for review, there were a few things I wanted to keep an eye out for. First was “the feel,” which seems like a pretty straightforward thing to get right—but which was also exactly what Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD, from 2012 (the last attempt to keep this franchise in the air), completely botched. The skaters in that game felt stiff and awkward, a far cry from the boneless superhumans flying through the air and twisting at impossible angles of the original games. THPS1+2, by contrast, feels as close to the originals as realistically possible, given the changes in video game technology over the past 20 years. That sense of speed and motion was aided by the fact that Vicarious Visions retconned history a bit by adding in abilities from later games in the series, like the manual (a wheelie that lets you chain street tricks together) and the revert (a little spin move that lets you chain a vert trick to a street trick), that really help the flow of the skating. So I can’t really criticize that.
The next thing I looked for was “the vibe,” which should be harder to immediately get right, since it’s a little harder to define. In these early games, before Bam Margera turned the series into a Jackass spin-off, the general aesthetic of Tony Hawk was basically a “skateboarding is not a crime” sticker slapped dead center on a piece of public property. The only antagonists, if you could call them that, were people and things that impede your ability to skate: security guards, speeding cars, and big sandy beaches. You can’t really fight any of these things, but you could sort of stick it to them by skating really well, doing tricks off of a taxi, or unlocking a secret cop character named Officer Dick. (Get it? Because he’s a dick.)
THPS1+2 still has all of that, except now it just looks better: Levels are covered in HD pro-skater graffiti, it’s sweeter than ever to smash the lights on a cop car with a sick grind, and a classic downhill run in an empty shopping mall now makes a point to show that the mall is completely abandoned and overrun with skater stuff—as if to say, “We outlived you.” It would be very easy to have crapped this thing out mechanically while sanding over any rough aesthetic edges (“ollie the magic bum” is still a thing you’re asked to do in one level, as non-PC as that language may be), but Vicarious Visions didn’t do that. Instead, it seems like they did their best to lovingly re-create the tone of those old games, without seeming old-fashioned or soulless. So that’s “vibe” nailed, too.
Finally, I wanted to explore how well THPS 1+2 tapped into my nostalgia for this series, since nostalgia is presumably a huge part of why this project exists. (It’s timed to the 20-year anniversary of THPS 2.) I loved these two games originally, but is a graphical upgrade enough to make me want to play them again in 2020? Yeah, as it turns out, it absolutely is. 2020 has been a miserable shitshow of a year, making it the ideal time to release such a faithful re-creation of a thing that made me and a lot of other people happy 20 years ago. I wasn’t even a teenager when I first played these games. COVID-19 wasn’t a thing, and Donald Trump was still the punchline to a joke instead of the joke itself (the punchline now being “We’re all going to die”). It feels really, really good to tap back into the part of my brain that remembers how to hit the line to open the dam valves on the Downhill Jam level, just like the first time I did it while playing on my friend’s N64 in middle school. And it feels especially good to do it while listening to the same dumb ska-heavy soundtrack that was plastered all over the old games. I don’t have to kill anything, nobody gets hurt or upset, and I know that I won’t be letting anyone down if I do a bad job. This is a game about self-improvement, hitting an obstacle head-on and finding a way to overcome it—usually with an ollie—and then skating away as a slightly better person.
So how the hell do I judge that? How do I judge a game that does exactly what I wanted it to do, does it exactly as well as it needs to, and has come at exactly the right time? There are things I would’ve liked to see—like more secret characters and a more robust option to make your own skaters. (There isn’t even an option for glasses!) But not having that stuff doesn’t really bother me. This is a better version of those games I loved 20 years ago, and that’s exactly what I needed. So I can’t judge it. It’s perfect.
113 Comments
They only could have made it worse (outside of the visuals). Such great games.Wish we would get more classics updated like this. Where is my SSX Tricky 4k?
What I want is the 4k Version of the game nobody asked for, but everyone needs. That’s right… I’m talking about “Snowboard Kids.”
Seconding the SSX remake demand!
I’m more of an SSX 3 guy, but yeah, Tricky (or 3! Or both!) with this treatment, please take my money.
I am also a devout follower of 3.
Am I alone in also loving SSX On Tour? And the THUG games and American Wasteland?
SSX On Tour was when they smeared the franchise with Mountain Dew and Axe Body Spray to make it eXXXtreeeeeeeeme.
no way! though i’m a sucker for character creation/customization, i’ll admit
If this game makes serious money, Tricky won’t be far behind.
Amp3! Ampd3! Ampd3!
I really want an HD remake of San Francico Rush from the N64. I just want to unlock the Mountain Dew Dragster and spend hours stoned making it bounce off the walls in the stunt level.
I’d love an arcade compilation of San Francisco Rush!
I need the “Wh-wh-wh-wh-what’s your name” song, remastered in Dolby 5.1 surround sound
Burnout 3 is in line for sure.
Allllllmost perfect, but the menu UI in 1+2 is pretty shit, though.
This. Also, there’s something weird going on with the “wind up” for ollies. There’s a bit of a delay when you start a run, which essentially has you holding down X a second time to get in that position.
Sadly gotta agree here. The menus are kind of a hot mess. And I agree with Sam that I wish it had better custom skater options.But other than those minor quibbles it is fantastic.
Agreed, the menu UI is annoying. There are a few non-gameplay things that stuck out to me. I’m on a PC and use an Xbox Controller. The menu is poorly designed. The menu doesn’t tell you what buttons are mapped to what in the menu (shows for the keyboard, and will ‘blip’ for a second the controller mappings). Rumble is broken, after each session my controller just rumbles until I start a new session and land a trick. It took me 2 days to realize how to claim my rewards (again, nothing saying I had to press Y to claim, not A that you would think). Also the nesting of menu’s in menus, but then using different tabs once in(like the skate shop).The game play itself is great.
It’s not intuitive, but I once you get the hang of it, it at least makes sense.
Yeah I’ve gotten pretty adjusted after my 10ish hours of playtime, but that doesn’t make them any less ugly and difficult to navigate.
I’ve had no hope for this title, and hadn’t even really watched much on it until a little while ago when I saw the Rodney Mullen interview and had a wave of nostalgia smack me in the face from middle school. I’ve watched NerdCubed absolutely giggle at how much this game is what we remember and more.I’m absolutely buying this, even if I don’t have the exact amount of time to play as I used to. This is what needs to be done with remasters, and needs to be supported.Wonder if I could find that one friend I played the first and second game with? That would be awesome.
This game has been really great, I’m shocked. It’s practically all I’ve been playing the last week, and it just absolutely nails the feel of playing the originals back in the day.
Outside of minor gripes (most of which you mentioned here), my only issue is the apprehension that they’re going to shoehorn in microtransactions in a few weeks. It’s already geared up for it, and the “premiere” decks have their own store tab, and are 120x the price of normal decks. That sorta thing just feels like it would tarnish a game that’s been really nostalgic and old school in its “just have fun” approach.
I explicitly finished the campaign of THPS 1 first so that I could go into THPS 2 with higher stats and just appreciate each level for what it was. I spent an embarassing amount of hours glued to THPS 2 with friends growing up looking for every secret, every gap and just mastering every level, all so we could play as freaking Spider-Man.Not only was this game so beautifully faithful to the originals, but it cranked my nostalgia meters up to over 9000. The hours spent in Marseille’s pool, grinding over that wall-mounted propeller to open the HUGE half-pipe in Hangar, and spending days trying to figure out how we could manual the loop-de-loop in Bullring (you can’t).This game is an absolute buy for anyone, especially people that grew up in the 90’s and early aughts playing these games. I would also recommend it to anyone that’s heard fables of the “great Tony Hawk games” but grew up toward the end of the series and didn’t like it because, well at least the last 4-5 games were unbearably bad.
Also worth noting that the soundtrack still absolutely slaps, and the new additions to it are absolutely perfect (big shoutouts to ‘Mid 20’s Skateboarder’ by Pkew Pkew Pkew, who you should absolutely see live if you get a chance)One thing these games did was introduce me to music: my house was lots of country music. Tony Hawk games really informed my musical tastes, and it’s delightful to see if still does this in 2020 as the additions turned me on to new music I may not have otherwise found (‘In Control’ by Baker Boy is a highlight for me)
…the manual (a wheelie that lets you chain street tricks together) and the revert (a little spin move that lets you chain a vert trick to a street trick)…I won’t pretend that this remake or the games that spawned it aren’t significant or meaningful to a lot of people, but boy do they just not resonate for me, and I feel like I gave them a fair shake back in the day. I think a large part of that had to do with the need to learn an extensive amount of foreign lingo (the quote above makes very little sense to me) and how to string together combos on the fly in a very small amount of time.Come to think of it, I’ve never been particularly adept at fighting games for the same reasons. I wonder if there is a demographic overlap there.
Ironically, before I reached your last paragraph I was thinking that the Pro Skater games were more like fighting games than anything else – I’ve never been fond of the lingo and combo structure of either genre, but I enjoy the part where you wiggle the joystick in a certain way and something cool happens.
I always liked (not loved) the THPS games, and absolutely HATE fighting games. I always felt like the big difference was that in a fighting game you had to have some dictionary of moves to memorize, but in THPS it didn’t really matter if you did a kickflip or a heelflip, or which grind you do, as long as you can string lots of stuff together. Obviously there are specials and things like that, but they always seemed less intense than the precision button mash in fighters.
Not true, in a fighting game let’s assume a fireball hits the opponent for 5% of their health bar, if you spam that fireball 20 times, you’ll kill them.In THPS a kickflip is worth 200 points (iirc), however, after about the fourth of fifth kickflip, it’s only worth about 25 points. The game rewards variety and punishes spams/button-mashing.
Plus, in THPS you can have fun without having to be “good”. I loved SFII back on the Genesis when I was younger with kids on my block, but trying to play SFIV when it came out reminded me that I wouldn’t have much fun online unless I studied and practiced.
THPS is fun just to ride around, listen to the music, pull off some silly tricks, and now watch some nice visuals. I’m not sure how anyone can really compare the two genres.
Also, the biggest difference is in THPS, you are usually playing “against” yourself to get the best high score. Outside of a few game modes, once you learn the flow of a level and how to time your tricks (and as you said, you don’t really need to know/use SPECIFIC tricks), you’re gold. In a fighting game step one is learning all the inputs and combos. Being able to pull those off regularly is difficult for many people even in a free play/training mode. It becomes harder to pull the off consistently in an actual match, and THEN you get to the point where you start learning range, priority, counters, how to read the OTHER player’s moves to figure out what you should do next… That shit is hard and where I usually drop off a fighting game.
I mean, they may not resonate but having to learn what moves/terms mean is probably not the true reason. Literally every new game you purchase has new terms/things to learn. You’re entering into completely different worlds with new mechanics and terms all the time. The perceived complexity of pulling off/chaining said moves, sure but the actual time spent learning a handful of new definitions? Nah.
I’ll admit up front that I don’t know anything about the skateboarding scene other than Tony Hawk himself seems like an upstanding individual. But then again I don’t know anything about being a space marine on a ring-shaped world, or a superhero with spider-based powers, or a young adult woman trying to survive a fungus-based zombie apocalypse, and I was able to make a stronger connection with those games for whatever reason. That doesn’t make those games objectively better by any stretch of the imagination, just that they appealed to me more.It is worthwhile to take the time to examine things you don’t personally care for, especially if they are exceedingly popular, to try to determine why these things didn’t appeal to you, and discover the connections between them and other such things that left you cold.
I mean, you do you, but I wouldn’t consider two words to be an “extensive amount of foreign lingo.” These two moves are really the glue that holds all the other tricks together. You don’t really need to know trick names or a bunch of crazy jargon, just how to keep doing tricks without breaking a combo.
It was just the most readily available example in the article, which also included “street trick” and “vert trick” which I can kind of glean the meaning behind. Here’s a better example I kicked up with a simple Google Image search for “Tony Hawk Combo”:Again, there isn’t any judgement behind this, but all I can take away from this screenshot is that this looks too complicated to me, both from a learning the lingo and applying it to actual actions in the game perspective, and from a performing those actions in the correct order in the time allotted perspective.
I mean it looks complicated, yes, but it’s really simple. So far he’s done 8 tricks chained together – a rail grind (the top button on your 4 button controller pad) followed by jumping off and doing a flip with a 360 degree rotation (the bottom button followed by the left button on your 4 button controller pad, while moving the left analog stick right or left long enough for the character to spin around once), Into a manual, this one is one the front of the board indicated by “nose” (push back then forward on the analog stick)Then another Ollie (bottom button) but this time since you’re jumping with the front of the board it’s call a Nollie or Nose Ollie, with a 540 degree turn once in air (one and a half rotations with the analog stick), the BS standing for backside. Also I’m assuming this was off a (vert) rampFollowed by a grab trick (right button on the 4 button control pad),Into a revert (right or left trigger) Followed by another Ollie (bottom button) and another flip (left button)Into a special (indicated by the yellow) manual (forward and then backward on the left analog stick before landing the Ollie).I feel like context clues helped me a lot as a kid figuring all this out, but also in there’s a tutorial in this game. I mean every game has jargon mapped to buttons, but you comment about “doing it in the correct order in the time allotted” makes me feel like you’re missing the point. The game is about freedom to just dick around doing tricks. The chained combos help get high scores which help unlock further stages, but there’s not real “correct order to things,” other than if you jump off of someth8ng and want to continue your combo, do a manual, or if you’ve gone up a ramp, when you come back down do a revert into another trick (again I usually manual) to continue the combo.
That was an astonishing amount of detail and I respect your ability to be able to break down all those tricks from just a screenshot. Kudos!As far as I can remember (keep in mind that it’s been 20 years since Tony Hawk 2 first came out) I was not really keyed into the gameplay cycle of “unlock new stuff by getting high scores” because I was struggling so much with the gameplay itself. Screwing around in the arenas didn’t feel fun to me because tricks and combos seemed to happen at random and no amount of tutorials or referencing the manual insert in the game case was helping me to get in the groove. All told, I think I spent an afternoon with the game before deciding that the frustration was outweighing the fun.
Bruh look again, hes done 59 tricks strung together in that combo. What you are seeing is the last 8 tricks, the multiplier is how you can tell. That is a screen shot from a very advanced player.
Very true, but I can only tell you what the last few chained things were given they’re the only things on screen.
You don’t need to pay attention to that. Just do tricks and string them together. Like I can’t tell you the difference between a kickflip and a hardflip, other than doing a variety of tricks in a combo gets you more points, so just try hitting square in different directions to get different results.
Not that it matters if the game just doesn’t appeal to you. There’s so much out there these days, so play what you like and be happy! I’m just saying that if you’re intimidated by text on the screen, or words you don’t recognize, don’t worry about it, because it’s not nearly as complicated as you think.
That’s fair. Honestly I was just looking at these games that seem almost universally beloved, but doesn’t do anything for me personally, and trying to figure out why that is and maybe draw some additional insight on it. I got a wild range of responses, varying in tone from the level-headed response you had, to ones where you can practically see the froth flying off the keyboard and punctuation is but a distant memory. You’d have thought I wrote “hur hur tony hawk sux ur dum if u lik it” instead…which obviously isn’t the case.
A “manual” is a wheelie, a “revert” is a little spin move. They’re useful in the game because they let you chain tricks together. Might have been clearer if the author spelled it out in the review, but anyway, hope this helps clear things up.
This might be the most savage comment in the history of Kinja.
And it’s also important to point out they’re super easy to pull off to keep your combo going (up-down or vice versa for manuals, R2 for revert). Like any added move worth its salt in a platformer, once you learn it, it becomes second nature in your arsenal
Yes you’re supers special and unique and interesting, that’s what you wanted to convert and be treated as no? Because hoo boy this is the most pretentious bs I’ve read today it’s a fucking skating game get over yourself, grow up you’re no longer the pathetic weirdo who got bullied it’s ok for you to just enjoy this GS we thout you having to make it all about how even back then you went to the beat of your own drum, man people are pathetic it’s a stupid skating game ! It’s not difficult sat all to just get it… Don’t be pretentious
Honestly, the first THPS was like a secret platformer, because the most fun I had with it was in discovering new places to grind. The tricks themselves weren’t terribly hard to pull off (usually a bit of informed button-mashing on my part) and chaining them together wasn’t too hard to pull off. I think by the time it got to THUG, they had refined the controls enough that it actually required some measure of skill to pull off anything outside the basic tricks, at which point I guess it did hit the Pro, quasi-fighting game level.
Yeah, the main thing was that you got fewer points for doing the same trick over and over, so if you had hit left on the d-pad when you started your grind and were about to switch to another rail, just make sure to hit some other direction on the d-pad when you do the next grind. You didn’t really need to know the specific names of tricks, other than to succeed on certain level-specific goals, like “bluntside the awning” (which really tripped me up for a while until I found a website that explained what buttons to press to get that specific trick).
I mean, they’re just names for moves. I’m no skater either, but this stuff isn’t rocket science, and you can pick up the most common things in the first few minutes of play. A manual is just where you skate on just the two front wheels of the board, and like he said in the article, the purpose of that is to allow you to keep a combo going while on a flat surface. Vert tricks are tricks done from a vertical surface (for example, 360s/720s on a half-pipe), street tricks are tricks done (surprise) from street level, like ollies (jumping in such a way that the board comes with you) or grinds (grinding along the edge of a surface with the bottom of the board). So a revert is just a way to go from doing vertical tricks to street tricks without breaking your combo.Regardless, you don’t actually have to learn the lingo – there are still plenty of moves I pull off that I couldn’t name if you asked me – you just have to learn their utility. Manuals are super easy, and are the cornerstone of keeping a combo going since you can do them without ramps/curbs/rails. Pretty much all the rest can be straight-up button mashing as long as you have a good line that provides plenty of opportunities for tricks.
Back in ‘98 (or whenever my brothers and I played it?) it was fairly novel — an open world and semi-interactive environments to futz around in: a strip mall, a school (wait, was this the same level?), a rodeo arena… Granted, we grew up on Doom 2 and the PS1 with MGS+TPHS2 was a new purchase for us.Lots of little secret areas and platformer-like puzzles and a great soundtrack to enjoy. We definitely did not give a shit about the mechanics and I barely remember trying to find a spot to do 1080º turn… with 0 other tricks. I do remember avoiding score attack levels like the plague.
I’m slightly better at THPS than any fighting game. But not good at either because of combo systems. I just enjoy THPS better because you can try over and over again easier. I like finding the secrets. But I’ll never be able to master it.
so basically youre talking about any game that has a steep learning/mastery curve? k.
You’ve actually hit on why I got into the series. The first few came out when I was on a gaming break, and skateboarding wasnt really something I cared about. When I did get back into gaming, it was for weirdo combo heavy Japanese stuff mainly, so when I saw my skater brother playing THPS3 or 4 and chaining together physically impossible moves and making numbers go up, I was into it. I still dont really care much about skating, but these games feel good. Like others have said, you dont need to memorize a move list, just think “oh, I did a circle and left trick on the last ascent, let’s try right right Square” and you’ll generally be fine.
If you’re caught up on the lingo, you’re missing the point. To me those and any other ”x-sport” game has always been almost just an exploration in whacky physics engines and how good the controls can feel for such a thing. I played this for probably 3 years growing up before I actually really understood what all the different tricks were.
THPS 1 and 2 are such perfect experiences for me that even though I 100% these games on both PS1 and Dreamcast, OF COURSE I bought this day one to not just revisit the nostalgia (esp. since my real-life hometown skate park of SkateStreet Ventura, as seen in THPS2, closed years ago), but also tackle the new challenges and get to know the current generation of skating talent.
Sure, but could you even open both secret gates in real life?
Haha, I loved that it was nothing like the real park aside from a) the giant skyline mural on the wall b) the floor-to-ceiling mega ramp and c) the second-story pedestrian awning. So it was recognizable ENOUGH but far more playable (and a lot less crowded!) in THPS than real-life
Does it have moon physics and Spider-Man? For those of us who are bad at combos and balance, those are integral parts of the experience.
I haven’t 100% everything (only the original 1+2 parks, not the free skate) – but when you 100% each they unlock mods. Those look to include things like perfect balance and some assists that would make it much easier. But again, you have to 100% the parks before that unlocks.
I was able to set perfect balance from the start. I wonder if that came with the deluxe version.
As you beat the game it unlocks all the cheats in the options menu. I haven’t unlocked moon gravity but I assume it’s there. I have perfect balance and no bail and the huge/tiny skater options so far.
They don’t have Spiderman, however if they did Sony would have demanded he be exclusive to Playstation, so you can probably thank Sony for his exclusion.
Not that I know of, but it has Jack Black as Officer Dick:
Neither of those, but you can get perfect balance, big heads mode, and a small handful of useful cheats.
Only two secret skaters, also: Officer Dick (as portrayed by Jack Black) and the Roswell Alien.
Apparently no moon gravity, but a lot of the other classic cheats are present:
https://www.criticalhit.net/gaming/tony-hawks-pro-skater-12-cheat-code-guide/I doubt Spider-Man is in it. Wasn’t that THPS 3?
So far its officer dick and alien
Nice try, Video Game, but the joke is on you! I no longer have the time!
So here I am, growing older all the time,
Looking older all the time,
Feeling younger in my mind (ok so that last line’s not completely true, but playing Tony Hawk listening to that song is about the best I can do to trick my mind into thinking I’m 14 again).
“Waahhh Trumpppp wahhh”
My only complaint is that the soundtrack is PG (swear words removed). How could they? (I know they kinda had to…)
They’re not censored on the official Spotify playlist. At least on PS4 (I think on XBONE as well and certainly on PC) you can stream your own music over the game.
I am terrible (TERRIBLE!) at these games, but god bless I love them so much anyway. I was terrible at them 20 years ago and I am still terrible at them today and I am having so much fun.
This is probably the game that I am best at in my mind. Outside of single player games where I’ve never actually tested myself against other human players and I gotta say I was humbled online trying to play against strangers for the first time.
Same I am so bad. I did some of the online play and on the “who can score 150,000 first” there was someone playing that did it all in one combo and the level was over in about 30 seconds o_0
I used to be the best player among my friends and was the first to score really insane high scores on 1 and 2. I have not played one regularly since 3, and unsurprisingly my skills atrophied quite a bit in the almost 20 years since then. I’m getting better with practice, but I just don’t think my reflexes/fingers have the same speed they did when I was 14.
I’m hoping you’ve found the mods that give you perfect balance. It makes the game really fun and I’m too old to feel guilty about it.
Waiting for someone to mod in Spider-man in order to reach true perfection in my eyes.
Introducing my son to Tony Hawks and the gang today means I will be adding no salt to the view that it’s perfect.
I had some issues with my muscle-memory (which I apparently still retained from 20 years ago) that clashed with the default control scheme. But there’s an option in the cheat menu for THPS1 or THPS2 controls which solved that. I’m quite pleased they kept the Dead Kennedy’s ‘Police Truck’ in the soundtrack. It’s especially timely.
I’ve played most THPS games that have ever come out. I still play TH Project 8 8 on XB360 with friends because the local head to head modes are fun and not any better in newer versions.I’m pretty much in agreement with the article, but will say I’m disappointed in the one part of the game that isn’t mentioned. The online experience is crap. I don’t want to play against a group of teenagers I don’t know in modes I don’t like. I want to play HORSE mode, online. The single player game is worth what I spent, but I’m disappointed in the online play.
A damn great remake that improves on the original in almost every way. I love that they added the mechanics of the later games (which I think you can turn off), and that each skater has their own individual challenges without having to repeat the generic level goals for each anymore.Only real nitpick is some of the objectives are hard to see with the improved graphics. Finding the “magic bum” was a real damn chore. I didn’t realize his magic included camouflage – give the poor guy a colored jacket, dammit!
This gives me hope that one day Aggressive Inline will also get a proper remake. It would be great to have it on PC.
I’ve been really enjoying it. I was never very good at THPS, but I have managed t0 100% both 1 & 2.
I wanted to explore how well THPS 1+2 tapped into my nostalgia for this series, since nostalgia is presumably a huge part of why this project exists. After playing through, I realized that 90% of my nostalgia stemmed from the demo. While I had played all the parks before, I just remember playing that demo over and over and over.
The weird thing for me is that there was a time in my youth where I would work hard to get good at games. I never really got into mastering fighting games, but I got fairly skilled at online multiplayer FPS games (Team Fortress Classic was my jam), and I put a ton of time into becoming really great at the Tony Hawk games. And what that meant at the time was starting a level with a 2 minute timer, playing for 30 seconds, making a mistake, swearing, and starting over. Rinse, repeat a thousand times. It was a lot of work and frustration that resulted in mastery.But 20 years later, I don’t really care about game mastery. There are too many games to play and too little time for me to spend months mastering a game. And real life is plenty frustrating on its own without bashing my head against a wall in my free time trying to perfectly time some button presses.So while I absolutely loved the THPS series and am deeply tempted to pick it up, part of me thinks that that may just be something that I’ve left behind.
Great review, great game – would echo others that there are a few other Games I would love to see get this treatment (SSX Tricky, Def Jam FFNY, Dave Mirra Pro BMX.. might be alone on that one)
But the one, one complaint I have.. as much as the series went outlandash and became a jackass spin-off in THUG2 (wasn’t for everyone.. teenage me loved the story).. I really think the series perfected its controls in that game. THPS 1+2 is great to do a 30+ trick line across 5 or 6 vert ramps + grinds, but THUG2 was so fluid that you could literally chain together a 400 trick combo over the entire CITY and I miss that freedom. (also, I liked free skating & exploring the world to accomplish my objectives rather than being tied to a time-limit & having to restart over and over).
This is such a fun game! I am right back into the feel of the originals. Consider me among the generation that can probably sing Goldfinger’s “Superman” verbatim I played the originals so much. The remake a couple of years ago was fine, sure…but this new remaster is indeed perfect. I loaded in, made my skater and set out into the warehouse…and immediately found my thumb drifting down to the D-pad because it just didn’t feel right otherwise. I’ve been cruising through each level since Friday and they’re all so much fun. Though I agree that I would like to give my self-insert skater some dang eyeglasses!
Is the soundtrack new or did they re license the original songs from the first games. The original had some real bangers
Both.
…So here I am, doing everything I can…
Holding on to what I am…
Lights out!
Guerrilla radio!
Turn that shit up!
Almost all the originals are back, except for the ones that have really messed up rights/licensing issues like “B-Boy Document 99.” Also they have added songs both new and old, I’m loving skating to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It.”
I’ve been incredibly impressed with how well Vicarious Visions nailed it. Like you, my only real gripe is how few options there are for a custom character. Maybe that stuff can be patched in, but whatever, man, this game is glorious.
Just enough for me to make a Margielyn Didal, please. That’s all I ask.
What the fuck are you smoking? Game is unforgiving. Original was nowhere near as tough to control. Yall are on some of that good drugs.
I haven’t purchased yet, but do they still have the grinds/gaps checklist? The completionist in my LOVED finding every single grind and gap on each level.
If you’re a completionist, this game is for you. There are hundreds (700+ I think) of “challenges” that you can complete during/after doing the usual stages. Some of these challenges include grind and gap checklists, and there’s a trophy for hitting all the gaps that I’ve already given up on. The game is amazing but has humbled me deeply. I was pretty good at THPS1 back in the day, but now that I can see what actual good players look like online (and because they added so many different types of tricks), I now realize I mostly suck.
“I WAS REALLY GOOD AT THIS IN 1999 WHEN YOU WEREN’T EVEN A GLIMMER IN YOUR MOTHER’S EYE“ is absolutely something I will end up yelling at some point I’m sure.
Back in my day, a million points really MEANT SOMETHING.
Oh man, you’ve got me really nostalgic now. Remember the feeling the first time you blasted through the glass over the halfpipe in the warehouse? The mechanics on that game were truly perfect.Ok that tears it, buying today. How gnarly are the spills (are they really bloody?) just wondering how much of this game I can play in front of my two year old. I assume they aren’t popping tibias through skin or anything.
No blood at all on the spills. Basically the skater will grab his/her back when they get back on the board if you let the animation play out, but it’s otherwise like nothing ever happened to them. I play in front of my 4-year old. She’s also played a little bit herself (she doesn’t do tricks, therefore doesn’t fall so she gloats about how good she is at the game compared to me). That being said, I sucked at the games when they first came out and I still suck now but I am having a blast playing it.
so when’s the pc version for this is going to release?
I have 100% 1+2 + the speed and ranked challenges, and I have found ONE complaint: in the originals, certain goals/extremely hard to get stat points could be achieved by sort of throwing yourself near them. They fixed a LOT of these bad mechanics on the remaster, thus making an overall better game. But damn if that hasn’t made some of the challenges damn near impossible. Specifically the roof top gaps in minnesota, and the stat points at the end of downhill + chicago skatepark are REALLY tough thanks to them actually fixing the game.All in all, this isn’t a real complaint, but that’s all I could find. OH! and I wish they had more zany costumes at the board shop (similar to Fortnite etc) do people really get excited about buying slightly different pants?
I bought this today, for my birthday no less. And I truly wanted to enjoy this as much as every reviewer I’ve read had. THPS is one of those undercurrents to my psyche that very much formed the person I am today. The much lauded soundtracks are my biggest musical touchstone and influence in my life. These games truly shaped me. But in actually playing them again today, I felt hollow. I don’t know what it is. Maybe I will eventually, but this game made me wish I was 9 years old again and begging for more tv time to play the originals, instead of trying to find the ambition to play another hour of this one inin my now more adult world.
just memory wiping thps5 then
I really loved the original games, and I have played the shit out of this since it was released. I guess I have to agree, it’s basically perfect… though I wish the soundtrack had the expansiveness of a GTA game for example.
“(the punchline now being “We’re all going to die”).”Serious question. I suffer from depression (or is it simply having too realistic a handle on things?). My therapist and everyone on my life tells me to avoid depressing things. But how can I do that if even what I enjoy keeps making these references? What exactly do you gain from doing this? Is it personal catharsis that you are unwilling to face consequences for? Is it sounding “edgy”? Do you truly believe this (as do I) and if so, why don’t you understand the effects that this has on people? How on earth are you supposed to live if every second of every day you get a reminder of the hell we live in yet if you even breathe a mere hint that you play on avoiding hell via suicide, THEN people start tripping over themselves to tell you life is still beautiful and worth it? Do THEY believe that or is it their way of tricking themselves into thinking they are doing a good deed by stopping a death? Or are they jealous that there are people willing to do what they are too scared to do or have prior ties preventing them from doing it? I don’t get it. Everything is doomed and people move on. It’s not even a case of something that can end like WWII. It’s inevitable collapse, both to fascism and climate change. Someone explain to me WHY. WHY LIVE.
I think the point is to acknowledge that things aren’t “normal” right now, and by acknowledging it we can start working towards a better baseline for everyone.
But ARE THEY ever going to go back to normal? As much as people want to believe other wise, they won’t. A COVID vaccine won’t be widely available until the end of next year at the earliest and even then there’s this chance that it will only take 6 months and thanks to anti vaxxers and governments who have already pledged to not make it compulsory it will never go away. Global warming is already on an irreversible path to collapsing society. People like Trump and Bolsonaro are still getting tons of support simply because they piss off “those people”. The internet has allowed everyone to exist in their own reality bubble and the Russians want to destroy democracy worldwide.Only reason I haven’t killed myself yet is because of my parents and even then I question if it’s worth it since they have casually admitted they want to vote for the Portuguese racist Trump wannabe simply to “stick it” to the current President because he shows up too often on tv. Everyone around me is either oblivious or just as hateful (I have a co-worker who openly says misogynistic shit and laughs about how back in his home country they told gay people off a cliff. He’s the most popular guy in the office. Even the women think he’s hilarious. I feel like I am trapped in an asylum and people with the least bit of empathy like me are in the minority and spat upon and mocked by the sociopaths that make up most of society. What can I do?
I agree that it’s unlikely that things will go back to normal, but eventually we’ll find a new normal, and it will continue to evolve. Everyone will find some things they miss about the old normal and things they like about the new one, and those sets will be different for each one of us. I can’t speak to the author’s intent, but “gallows humor” is how a lot of us process these enormous problems that are too big for us to handle and seeing little jokes like this helps us recognize that others feel the same way and we’re all in this together, but I completely respect how, if you’re not in that mindset, it’s a depressing reminder that it feels like everything is awful and getting worse (ambushing you while you’re trying to distract yourself from depression by reading about a skateboarding game), and I can only imagine how much that sucks. I’m going to make an effort to remember this in my own life going forward.I’ve never had to deal with the type of serious depression that you describe and I appreciate that I can’t truly understand what you’re going through, but what works for me is trying to find small ways to help others through the day. Nothing grandiose, just little stuff: let someone out into traffic, pick up some trash and throw it away, hold a door for someone, give a smile and a kind word to someone having a bad day, make a little extra effort to help a coworker solve a problem, or take a minute to put that shopping cart some jackass left in the middle of the parking lot in the return corral and push them all together. Once you start looking for them there are dozens of opportunities every day to do something tiny that make someone else’s life a little easier, and in turn might ripple out and make some of their interactions with others a little better. Shitty behavior breeds shitty behavior, and kindness breeds kindness, so my philosophy is to do my best to stay on the right side of that equation and try to make the things that are under my control a little bit better and hope that makes it a bit easier for others to do the same. I hope you can find an approach that works for you – if you can’t, and you’re truly thinking of ending things, please reach out to someone first: 1-800-273-TALK (8255) seems to be the go-to starting point. We’ve only got one chance at life, so please make sure to consider all of your options before you close the door for good. Good luck, and be well.
WHY LIVEBecause you get to wake up every day and say “Fuck you” to those who wish you hadn’t.Because you get to steal joy from the cracks in the system.Because you get to outlive every one of the bad ideas that fucked you up today and be a walking monument to life and love over hate and greed.Because I’d like you to.
I don’t want to fight. I didn’t ask for any of this so I don’t have to. If that makes me a coward fine but at least I am not as bad as the people actively making things worse. Ifni do nothing, I cannot be accused of making things worse. If I don’t play, I can never lose. If I am brought in front of God and called a coward then I can tell Him that a true merciful God would get on His knees and beg for the forgiveness of a poor unfortunate man like me and all those who suffered even worse.
As a villain, no one give us credit for not making things worse. They will never understand the strength it takes to open our eyes every day and promise to make things better. When everyone else gets to fail and not be held responsible, we are the fucking rock.
If you find your strength from God, read Job and embrace it.If you find your strength in you. I believe in you, and every day we show that we are right and this world is wrong is another day we get to try to make this shit rock a place that deserves us.
get a new therapist
On PC at least, it’s far from perfect for me. The game is an EGS exclusive with Denuvo. Either of those things is enough to turn me off. I’m avoiding it until neither of those things are true, and if that never comes I’m perfectly happy to stick with the original games.