Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 was a phenomenal package that made lifelong fans like myself fall in love with its quarter pipes and rails all over again. It was a wonderful tribute to the 1999 and 2000 originals, but there was one big bugaboo that left me and other fans wanting: the exclusion of the series’ third entry. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 felt missing from the first remake, stripped from the games it most closely resembles. And while that problem may seem solved with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, from the outside, developer Iron Galaxy has made a number of decisions that are likely to leave fans of the originals disappointed, even though this second remake is still an excellent Tony Hawk game.
The original three games fit together perfectly, with each subsequent game adding new mechanics that made the series’ trick system feel complete by Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. Each game was also structured in the same way, giving players two-minute skate sessions to complete as many goals as they could, performing tricks and earning high scores, before moving on to the next two-minute session. It’s a format that works well, so much so that you’ll have a hard time stopping yourself from going for one more run.
However, it’s not how Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 was structured, with the fourth game instead opting for freely roamable levels that mission-giving characters called home. Time limits only came with specific challenges when the likes of pro skater Geoff Rowley asked you to steal police officers’ hats or a college student pleaded with you to take revenge on the local frat boys. In THPS 3+4, the levels from 4 have been retrofitted to behave and play like levels from the first three games. That means fewer goals per level, no mission-givers, and a time limit to top things off.
