By now most gamers should be fairly familliar with the Tony Hawk franchise.
Unless you've been living under a rock since 1998, you should know that this series
is about playing as one of many selectable professional skateboarders, completing certain
objectives and racking up high scores by coming up with a large string of tricks. While the
franchise has really never changed from day one (including this installment), each installment
of the series has improved the engine and design of the game, and has included new ways
to keep the combos going such as manuals, reverts, and now, flatland tricks. THPS 4 may possibly
be the best game in the series yet, because it finally does something that it should have done
a long time ago that really improves the gameplay.
For a long time, this series (as well as other extreme sports titles) has always been
held back by one thing: a clock. It's one of the most frustrating things in extreme
sports games, because you're given a list of objectives, and you need to decide which
ones you want to accomplish within two or three minutes. On top of that, it really breaks up the
fluidity of the game when you can only play in 2 or 3 minute bursts at a time.
It really wasn't until Z-Axis's Aggressive Inline that a change was forced upon
the extreme sports genre. In that game, the stage timer was ditched, and each objective
that needed to be completed could be done by going to a character in the stage.
Of course, not all time limits were banned forever, as the objectives did have time limits.
But with the omission of a timer for the whole stage, you could spend more time exploring an
area, find the best combo lines, and practice completing objectives. The idea/concept
was so good, that the team at Neversoft finally decided to ditch the clock, and
pretty much base the course design that is similar to Aggressive Inline's. The difference
is, though, is you have more tricks, better ways to create combos, less frustrating objectives
and more familliar extreme sport personallities.
THPS 4 is pretty much an overhauled installment when compared to THPS 3. Like I mentioned,
the timer is gone. You can now explore the stages, find the best lines, practice trying to complete
objectives and not break up the action by looking at a menu every three minutes.
But the stages are actually now bigger than before. Actually, it makes perfect sense
on having to do so, because if you offered unlimited time in small settings, it would be
kind of a disappointing game. So the whole scope of the game feels bigger, you have a lot
more time to enjoy the stages and have a lot more space to explore.
The trick system hasn't seen much of a change other than the addition of skitching
(riding behind cars) and spine transfers. I though the flatland tricks were new, but
maybe they were in THPS 3. But just because the overall system hasn't changed much
doesn't mean it's a bad thing, as it's just been tightened even more to be even more accessible
and fun. You have your assortment of air tricks, grinds, lip tricks, manuals, flatland tricks,
transfers, reverts and probably a few other things I haven't touched on. There's a lot
of variety on what you can "pull off" in the game, which can lead to big combos
which equals big scores. Although you spend the whole time skating, there's enough
variety to keep the game from being stale.
The visuals are an improvement over THPS 3's, which is proabably due to Neversoft
ditching the Renderware middleware format. I think only Criterion Studios can really
tap into the full potential of Renderware, so maybe it's best that Neversoft did something
themselves. The character models look less like action figures, but the texturing
kind of makes them look beaten up. Of course, they're skateboarders, so it's understandable.
The course designs are clean and functional, and the environmental textures are
good. They aren't as blurry as what you would see on the PS2, but not as sharp
as I've seen in other Gamecube titles. There are some problems with the framerate,
which seems to have hitches when there are more "pedestrians" in the stage. If you
actually play the game on Single Session (which removes most NPCs), the framerate is smoother.
But in the actual career mode, there's more character models on screen, which seems
to make the framerate jumpy. Overall, it's not a bad looking game, but it still isn't
as smooth as it should be.
The audio disappointes me a bit. The sound effects are fine, where everthing
pretty much sounds as they should. The voice acting is good, and even humorous,
but we really aren't expecting Oscar-worthy performances here. I do have issues
with the soundtrack. I have heard many critics and even people gush over the soundtrack,
and how great and diverse it is. I don't like it. I really can't find one song
out of the whole thing I like, and a lot of the tracks sound the same to me. It's not
like SSX Tricky, or even Aggressive Inline, where I can find some songs I like and ones
I actually DO want to hear. Another audio offense cones from the FMV, which is the
result of the despised Bink Video format. Bink works fine on the Xbox, since there's
more memory on the discs. But every time I have seen games that have used Bink Video
on the Gamecube, the audio sounds like crap. It's tinny and compressed. Isn't there
something better the developers could use?
Final Thought
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 really doesn't change a whole lot in the genre, but
instead offers more freedom to do more in the game, and that works well in it's
favor. It's a lot more fun to play without time limits holding you back, and
you're allowed to do more because of it. This is a game you really can't go
wrong on, since it's easy to get into, and offers a lot for you to do. Even if you
don't like skateboarding, or can't skateboard (like me), THPS is a great game in it's
own right.
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